Spring Break- Part 1 Mole, Larabanga, Kumasi

Spring Break

I am going to start by saying simply that I have just had a truly life-changing week traveling around Northern and Western Ghana with my friends Mara and Camilla. I am so incredibly grateful for every experience that I had, and I have that incredible feeling that you get when you have experiences like this and literally wouldn’t have wanted to change a second of it.
I suppose the best I can do is start at the beginning and see how far I get, at least in this post. Camilla, Mara and I got up around 5am, and left Accra on an STC bus(similar to greyhound) headed to Tamale, in Northern Ghana. It was a fourteen-hour trip, and when we finally arrived at our hotel, and persuaded the restaurant to feed us around eleven, it felt amazing to be on solid ground. The three of us cuddled into a double bed and slept for a solid 4 hours, before waking up at 4 am to catch a four hour bus ride through mud-hut villages and red dirt roads to Mole National Park and Larabanga village. We were covered in red dust by the time we entered the park and reached the pretty funny 1960’s style hotel in the middle of the expansive park, with lookouts that viewed the savannahs and two watering holes. We arrived in time to have breakfast, where we were greeted by families of baboons and warthogs, who would literally grab your things or sniff around your shoes if you weren’t careful. We cooled off in the pool and then went on a walking tour through the park with an armed guide, searching for elephants. The scenery was stunning, hot and drier that we have seen before. We saw kobs, antelopes, and beautiful, exotic birds, but no elephants yet. Our guides all promised us they would go home and pray all night, hoping that we would see one tomorrow.
When we returned however, we found out that the hotel in fact had absolutely NO vacancy. Every room, dorm bed, was full. They did however, have one more tent that we could rent. Enthusiastically we agreed, and when it got dark, we walked into the trees a little ways to the campground, and literally set our tent up on a wooden platform. Now lets talk about this tent situation. It was a two person tent. Barely. No mats, no sleeping bags, just plastic bottom on wood. And we can’t just sleep under that stars here because apparently the baboons are aggressive and we need to be careful about exposure to mosquitoes to avoid malaria. So the three of us crammed in together, me in the middle, as usual( we have a formation☺ .) I don’t think I can describe the heat that was inside that tent. Imagine NO BREEZE in a plastic tent, in about 90-100 degree weather. If you moved a muscle, sweat dripped, from every single pore of your body. We were not prone to claustrophobia, but I think it is safe to say, that that night we were. It was funny it was so unbearable, but, of course, laughing at it moved a few muscles. However, we were so exhausted, having gotten about 3 hours of sleep in the last two days that we fell asleep, and woke up, actually refreshed. Around 6 in the morning, I unzipped the tent and breathed in real, fresh air, just in time to see a friendly family of warthogs hanging out about five feet from us. I waved them good morning before rousing the girls and packing up, in time to make the 7am safari drive around the park, for our second attempt at seeing elephants. And see them we did!
Seeing an elephant, in the wild, not a zoo, on TV, in the Lion King, or anything else, is one of the biggest rushes in the world. Their sheer size is astounding. I was overcome by their gracefulness, by the way they held themselves. It was a beautiful experience. We got about 15 meters away, closer than you get to them on any safari, anywhere. They were bathing, and had such a tangible form of communication with each other. Walking back, the girls and I were blissful. WE reached to hotel before breakfast. We could get used to this schedule. I think it is also necessary that I point out that both safaris that we went on in Mole cost the equivalent of 10 US dollars. This includes guides, transportation, everything. The cost of things here is truly unbelievable. East African safaris will usually cost upwards of 3 or 4 hundred dollars A DAY. Wow. What a gift to be able to do all of this.
Later that afternoon, we called the Salia brothers, twin brothers that live in a neighboring village that had been recommended to us by students who had been to NYU in Ghana before. They drove up to Mole, picked all three of us with our stuff up on motorbikes and drove us to their village of Larabanga, where we were given a mattress and a place to stay on their roof. Seriously. It was amazing. We walked around the village with their children, saw an ancient mosque that is the oldest structure in Ghana, and returned, where we hiked up to a neighboring compound and were led to a table and served food by lantern light. Apparently, the wife of one of the brothers had been in the kitchen, making us dinner. It was incredibly sweet. The brothers sat down with us and we talked until late in the evening. The stars here were some of the clearest I have ever seen. You can imagine, when no one has electricity for miles, the sky is like diamonds. We were led back to their house, in the middle of the village, and we got ready for bed by lantern again, and climbed up to our perch on the roof, where a foam mattress and a sheet was laid out. Perfect. Elephants and rooftop sleepovers. An excellent day. It was the most wonderful feeling to lie down, staring up at the sky, surrounded by Mara and Camilla, giggling and asking the question, Where ARE we? It was a perfect night.
Our next day was not quite so exciting, at 4 in the morning, we were woken up and told that our bus to Tamale, where we were headed, was leaving. We jumped out of bed and threw everything we had into our backpacks and barely were able to elbow our way on to the bus, but we made it, thanks to the help of our host. After four hours, we arrived, had time for a much needed breakfast, and got on another 8 hour bus ride to Kumasi, to stay in a wonderful backpacker guesthouse. We had a fantastic dinner at a neighboring restaurant, and returned late at night to take our first showers in a long time. What a fantastic feeling☺ The next day, we got up at 4 am again and headed to the coast of Western Ghana…I will save that for the next post…much love