Adventure to the North!

We embarked on our journey on a Thursday morning at roughly 10:20 am. We were supposed to leave at 9am sharp after a short class on the north that none of us were aware of, but we’re on Ghana time now. There are 9 of us girls (8 USAC and the lovely addition of Emily from New York), our tour guide Joe, our buddy Peter and the bus driver piled into a short luxury bus. For the most part we each got out own row of two seats with Joe moving around from time to time. He mentions something about it being a 5-6 hour trip and most of us start getting into relaxing positions, putting in our headphones and maybe even dozing off. The road isn’t bad except for the speed bumps every so often that they use as a speed controller.

About 3 hours in, when most of us are trying to sleep, we hit a patch of road that is filled with deep potholes and is under construction. We are violently jostled awake as the bus driver hits a particularly large bump and we all start to look around and laugh. The whole road is like this, so we all sit up and grab the handles in front of our seat as we do our best from flying around the bus. It is then that Joe gets our attention with “Ah-go”. We all respond with “Ah-may” which is the Ghanaian way of getting a group of people attention. He proceeds to inform us that this road will continue for an hour, and I think he is joking. He is not.

After a very long 6 hour drive, with only a few strops at the cement blocks they call urinals, we arrive in Kumasi. We settle down in rooms of 3, with what I like to call the super bed because it looks like 2 queens pushed together. Then we head down for dinner enjoy a meal mostly consisting of rice and meat.

The next day we wake up early to have breakfast before getting on the road yet again. We have 8 hours to drive, but we split it us into 4 hour increments with 2 hour break in between. After the first 4 hours we make it to Kintempo. There we place an order for lunch and head over to the falls about 5 minutes away. We walk down a long steep flight of stairs to the gorgeous view of Kintempo Falls. There is a group of highschoolers jumping around in the water and doing some sort of dance and cheer (my guess is its football related).

We start to take our tentative pictures, inching closer to the water, but not quite ready to get wet. Finally one of goes for it and the rest of us quickly follow. The high school kids are all going down the natural waterslide on the rocks and are quick to help us go with them. I get close to the slide and begin to climb up, when one the guys grabs my hand to pull me up, while a girl starts to support and push me from behind. Ghanaians are certainly friendly. I get up high enough and the boy helping me plops me in his lap while the girl sits behind him. I would protest, but I am sort of afraid of scraping my legs, so I let it go.

One push and off we go! It’s a short slide, but we do it about ten times. I then spend some time under the waterfall letting the intense water massage my tense neck and back and soaking up the sun as it peaks out from the clouds. Its perfection, but only for a moment as our allotted time is soon up and we are heading back up the hill. After changing we grab our lunch to go and are back on the road!

An hour in and we reach a rough dirt road with rivets all along it. It reminds me of those days as a kid, when I could still sit in the shopping cart and my mom would push me over the cobblestone cement and I would make noise just so I could hear the wobbly sound my voice made. It was like that, only more intense with a few big bumps thrown in. Joe says his “ah-go” which I am beginning to resent because its never followed by good news. He tells us we will spend three hours on this road and my dislike of the word is confirmed.

It was a very long three hours. I remembered hearing that when a car crashes, drunk people, babies and people sleeping are the ones who are less injured. I try to keep this in mind as we drive along. We drive past a lot of villages and everyone looks at us as if we are the circus. We stop in one town to get gas and we all get out to stretch. Some people are talking to Joe and the  driver as some kids are staring curiously at us. As we get back in the bus one runs up to me gets really close then backs away almost scared. The adults laugh and try to push him a little closer, but its obvious he is alarmed by my white skin.

After a very long day of driving we finally arrived at the Mole (pronounced mole-ay) national park hotel. We waited a long time for our meal and were told we would take the 6:30 am safari tour. All of us hung out by the pool (they had a pool!) telling stories and playing cards until we all decided to go to bed.

Bright and early the next day we set off for our safari! After listening to some safety tips, we get our guide and head off! Our guide looked straight out of a film, with his green jumpsuit, boots and gun. It was a little intimidating to say the least! We walked through the nearby village where we saw plenty of warthogs before we headed down into the valley. Its dry season here, so it was mostly dry grass and dead trees. It actually reminded me of the elephant graveyard in the lion king, which is ironic, because the next thing we saw were elephant bones.

We saw some monkeys in the distance, lots of antelope (which look exactly like deer), and I caught a glimpse of a crocodile jumping out of one of the watering holes, but what we really wanted to see were elephants. After almost 2 hours we thought we were out of luck and headed up the hill, when our guide looks back and sees one in the distance. We rushed down to see four elephants by the water! Two were bathing with one right by them, and one was standing off the side. We actually got pretty close to the one on the side, which isn’t normally advise, because apparently they are the second fasted land mammal and could charge you. Luckily this one was docile so we had fun taking pictures!

After the safari we hung out by the pool and swam, enjoying our day of no swimming, before we had a tour of a mosque. I wasn’t feeling well so I stayed back and slept. We decided to pay a little extra to sleep in a tree house that night, so it’s a good thing I got some sleep.

Once they got back we put on our pjs, grabbed our dinner to go and headed out. On the way we saw a few baboons running around and some more elephants. One of the elephants actually blew his horn! Which actually probably meant he was going to charge us soon, but we were in a bus and we left shortly.

The tree house reminded me of the one at redwood camp at Mount Hermon. There was plenty of room with a fence to prevent falling and no roof so we could see the stars. The only thing they gave us to sleep on was a very thin foam mat. The hotel caught us before we could take pillows or blankets, so hen we finally settled down for sleep, we found it rather uncomfortable. It actually got really cold during the night and I kept trying to scoot closer to the girl next to me, but she always rolled away! So I tried to get as much sleep as I could while we all waited for sunrise to come.

After breakfast we headed back on the bus to go to Kumasi yet again! We made it past the dirt road in a record breaking 2 hours, which made the trip easier. Before we got all the way to the hotel we stopped by a market, which was a little overwhelming for all of us in our tired state.

The next day we went to the Chief’s house museum, where we saw (and heard) a bunch of peacocks that disturbed our tour guide with their yowls. Afterwards we went to the woodcraft village. The people there we very eager for us to come into their shop; swarming us right off the bus. I didn’t mind because I genuinely didn’t mind because I love woodwork and had fun looking at all of their stuff.

We only had half an hour there before we headed to a place where they make a famous Ghanaian cloth. Actually their cloth isn’t so famous as their printing on the cloth is. They made the ink from scratch and have tons of stamps with Ghanaian symbols on them. We were actually able to print some for ourselves!

While some were still printing some of us were standing by the drying fabric. I was looking at a woman who had a baby securely wrapped in cloth to her back (as all the women here seem to do it). I decide to ask her how she wrapped it and without hesitation she unwraps the kid and starts putting him on my back. I was incredibly surprised and had no time to protest before she started to wrap the cloth with ease. I couldn’t help laughing while still trying to support this baby.  Once it was on the baby got a little fussy, probably wanting his mom back (who can blame him). All of the Ghanaian were cracking up and told me to bounce him. So I proceeded to do a booty shake to bounce this baby, but he still wasn’t too happy. They all told me it was because of my hair and white skin. I can only imagine how freaked out this kid must be having an alien of sorts holding it. Once into his mother’s arms again he settled down and we set off to the last craft village.

We saw the Kente cloth last, which Ghana is also famous for, explaining its high price. I got a few souvenirs and we finally headed home. Kendra had bought a DVD with about 10 movies on it for 2 cedi, so we watched those on the way back, which made it so much more relaxing.

Overall it was a great trip and quite the adventure!

 Kintempo Falls

Mole National Park

The Falls

The lovely road there

Our safari guide

Elephant Graveyard

Live elephant

Sunset over the park

Tree House

Peacock

Making Ink

Greatest moment of my life