African Vacation

Okay, so this blog is gonna be pretty long, obviously. I will update you on my past week of crazy vacationing in Ghana. We took everything we needed for the week in one backpack each. Needless to say, we wore a few things more than once and by the end of the week we smelled disgusting. SO good to be home. Ps. I wrote this quickly. I apologize in advance for spelling mistakes. I also didn’t write it very amusingly; there was a lot to write about so I just cranked it out.

Here is my week in a nutshell:

Day 1: Monday

We left Asamankese at about 6am to go to Accra. We needed to get money out and it was the first time using the Visa Card and wanted to make sure that it worked for us, so we decided to hit up Accra so that if things went wrong, we could just go by the bank.

The whole bank system was down. Perfect start. We called the bank and they had us wait off and on about 2-3 hours before things were working again, so we went to Osu and sat in Chicken Inn for about half of that. There are NO spots to just sit in Ghana, and they really don’t like it when you sit on the ground, so Chicken Inn became our new best friend.

Finally, at around 1ish, the bank system was back to normal and we could grab some cash and get going.

Two really friendly guys came and helped us find the buses to Cape Coast and then we were off in the lovely air conditioned van.

Cape Coast in the Background

We got there and stayed at Oasis Beach Resort. It was right on the beach and about 50m from Cape Coast Castle which was pretty sweet. We had our own little hut and it was super cheap too. We shared a double bed and had a little sink and stuff.

The showers were outdoor. That was fun.

Cape Coast Castle was cool. We decided not to do the tour. We could see the outside for free. It was right on the coast and there were huge rocks with giant crashing waves. It was really pretty!

Day 2: Tuesday

We woke up and decided to go to Kakum National Park in the morning. It is this walk into the rainforest and then there are wooden and rope walkways above the trees. It was super cool and really pretty! They said there was potential to see monkeys and bush elephants so I was pretty disappointed that we didn’t...

We met a guy named Ioan (pronounced Johan) who was Swedish and Welsh on the canopy walk. He was really nice and had been traveling around Ghana for 3 months on his own. We decided to go with him to Elmina since we were going to do that at some point anyway. Petra and I needed a break from being just “Petra and I.”

Kakum National Park

So Elmina. It’s this slave castle of sorts...don’t really know, I didn’t listen to the tour to be honest. It was about history. History is boring. The view was sweet though! It was along the coast and beside a huge fishing village. So I just happily went along taking pictures and left the group a bunch of times on my own. Wasn’t really interested in how the actual castle worked...whoops...

Elmina Castle

We had dinner with Ioan that night and then we separated to rest for a bit before meeting up again in the evening to have a drink at our resort. It was SO nice to talk to someone other than just the two of us for once. We spent a good 2 hours talking about what foods we wanted to eat when we got home.

There were about 18 American girls staying near our resort too, so they joined us at night and we talked about what we’ve been doing. It was good to talk out our experiences and share the good stuff and the super frustrating parts of our internships with other people who understand.

Day 3: Wednesday

We got up and met Ioan for breakfast. We had banana pancakes with chocolate and icecream on them. Yum. He was flying back to Sweden that day, so we wanted to say goodbye and thank him for traveling with us a bit.

We wanted to go to Busua Beach that day, so we had to travel to Takoradi from Cape Coast, and from there to Agona and from THERE to Busua. We hate taxi drivers. They suck.

We finally got to Busua at like 5 in the evening. We figured out that day, we had been on trotro’s longer than our flight from Toronto to Germany lasted....blah.

The beach was beautiful though. SO worth it. We stayed at Busua Inn. We had real glass windows. And two single beds with a fan. It was glorious. We didn’t have to share a bed!

There was a big island in the middle of the ocean, not far from the beach and mountains on either side of us. AND IT WAS CLEAN. We could swim. It was awesome.

We had dinner at the African Rainbow Resort down the road on the roof top bar. We ordered burgers and fries. It took 2 hours to make haha. Oh Ghana...

MONKEY!

We got back to the hotel and there was a monkey!!!!! Apparently it had just showed up one time and people started feeding it so it sticks around. Super pumped to see that! It was real friendly and let us pet it.

Day 4: Thursday

Busua Beach

This was just beach day. That’s it. Best ever. We got up and had breakfast at Daniel the Pancake Man and got freshly squeezed juice from Frank the Juice Man, and then literally went swimming all day long. We got super burnt. Which are now fantastic tans again already!

The monkey stole my banana at lunch.

HE STOLE MY BANANA!

We met a family from Colorado. They were visiting their daughter who was here for 2 years with the American Peace Corps. 2 years would be just insane I think. We got something to drink with them and chatted for quite a while. Turns out, the monkey could get in their room! It was hilarious! He actually turned the door knob and pushed it open from the balcony railing. HAHA. I got a picture. They asked me to email it to them. I had to take it, I was the only one on the terrace outside of their room and they kept pushing their door closed as the monkey opened it. I didn’t want them to think I was a freak and that I was opening their door!

Day 5: Friday

We got up and had breakfast. The plan for the day was to go to Beyin so that we could do Nzeluzu the next day. We took a cab back to Agona. A trotro back to Takoradi. A trotro to Beyin. This trotro took literally 2 hours to fill up. We sat in a trotro that wasn’t moving for 2 hours. FUN. Then we drove the 3 hours to the middle of nowhere to Beyin.

We stayed at Beyin Beach Resort. It was beautiful. We stayed in a little hut and they had GRASS! And little tiki huts on the beach. It was super cute.

Beyin Beach

Day 6: Saturday

We had breakfast and then wanted to do the Nzeluzu Stilt Village. It is a whole town that is built on top of a lake. You take a walk to the lake for about 45 minutes and then you take an hour boat ride to the village before looking around there!

We got a ride with this Pastor and his wife and her 2 sisters and shared a boat with them too which was a good time.

Normally you don’t have to walk that far, but since it is the dry season, we had to walk pretty far to get to the lake. It had just rained a bit so we had to wade through mud. That was just digusting. We had to take off our shoes and I thought I was going to get blood suckers or a parasite or something. Yes, I’m a sissy. The boat ride was AWESOME. I felt like I was going down the Amazon River at first through the trees and stuff. And it opened up onto this beautiful, crystal clear lake. It was so nice.

There was a leak in our boat so one of the ladies had to scoop it out with a bucket as we went.

There was a Ghanaian who paddled for us and we didn’t have to help (thank goodness).

We got to the town on stilts. It was small and to the side of the lake. Apparently there are about 550 people living there and they don’t need to be on stilts on the lake. They all have farms about a mile away, so there is no reason for their town to be built on the water where it is. I guess now they just keep it to make a ton of cash off of poor tourists like us.

on the boat to the stilt village

Some of the town wasn’t in water since it is the dry season. It was cool to see the difference between what it looks like dried up and what it looks like on the water. Apparently during the rainy season the water comes above the walkways and they have crocodiles on the “paths/roads?” everyday. There were a lot of naked children running around...not so sure how I would feel about my kids running around with no pants on if there were crocodiles...

Nzeluzu Stilt Village

There was a big group of Ghanaian university students that went the same day as us and it was hilarious watching them on the boats and waiting at the dock because none of them could swim. They were also all taking pictures of Petra and I because we were white instead of the village itself. We are the tourist attraction AT the tourist attraction. Ridiculous and hilarious...

Day 7: Sunday

We got woken up by the owner at the Beyin Beach Resort. He does turtle conservation and some of his baby turtles had hatched and were making their way down the beach to the ocean. So he woke us up to go see. We were the only two people left at the whole resort. That was pretty cool. The turtles were so tiny and cute. I took a video of them making their way to the water.

Baby turtles

We took the trotro to a little town that was right along the border of the Ivory Coast.

Small funny story:

                -okay, so we were as far west as we could be without reaching the Ivory Coast which is pretty dangerous, and apparently they have had problems with people crossing the border illegally so immigration checks people’s passports at a little police brigade close by.

Well...remember a long time ago near the beginning when the police took Charles’ license away to “check” it and and wouldn’t give it back without money? I thought that this was like that. The cop came up to the window and asked if we had our passports. I did, Petra did not. I said no. He asked us why not and I guesssss I was a little bit rude to him thinking that he was just going to charge us money to get them back. He then asked me if I realized that he could detain us until our passports were presented. Still thought he was just a cop. I responded with, “no, I don’t know that.” Whoops. Carolyn is rude and disrespectful. It was then that I noticed a huge office to the side that said “Immigration Office of Ghana.” I had already told him that I didn’t have my passport though, so if I didn’t stick to my story, I would have looked like a fool, so I continued to lie and say I didn’t have it. He threatened to detain us again so we showed him the paper that proved we were volunteers and luckily he let us go...that wouldn’t have been good....stupid Carolyn.

So from there, we took the trotro to Takoradi. That was a 4 hour trip. It would’ve been long, but this lady came on the tro with her two little twin boys, and how in the world could she manage to sit on a tro for 4 hours holding BOTH of them? She couldn’t possibly...so I took one. Didn’t even have to ask; I just reached out my arms to him and she said, “Oh thank you, thank you! You are helping me so much!” ...I got to hold an adorable little black boy for 4 hours. He fell asleep in my arms (most people sleep on the tro’s) and I was just in my glory.

From Takoradi, we took the tro to Cape Coast where we spent our last night before going home. It was ...interesting...

                -we had reserved the same little hut for this night at Oasis Beach Resort when we left on Tuesday, knowing that we would only want to come back this far before resting from Beyin. When we got to Oasis this evening, we could tell that it was pretty busy and apparently, even though we had made reservations, they booked our room out to someone else. Ghana for ya. So they offered us a tent for pretty cheap. We figured it was just our last night, why not. (They gave us a mattress and pillows and stuff anyway). So we get to the tent. It was big and all set up nicely, but it had no fly. So I asked the guy, “what happens if it rains, it will just pour into the tent and we will be soaked...” He told us it wasn’t the rainy season so there is no way it would rain.

20 minutes later it was pouring and all of our stuff was soaked. We raced to grab it all out of the tent as he tried to move our mattress to this tiny tent that DID have a fly. (Why he didn’t put us in there in the first place is beyond me). After trying for about 5 minutes (still in the pouring rain) he finally realized that this mattress wasn’t fitting in this tent and moved us to the floor of a dorm. This dorm had walls that were made of slats with big spaces in them so that the air could flow through them. Or in this case, lots of rain. Inevitably, we were getting soaked all night either way, so we figured we would just go to sleep in the clothes we were wearing and just deal with it. That was a pretty chilly night.

This was our tent in the rain...

We laughed it off though, thankful it was our last night.

Day 8: Monday

HOME TIME! We got up real early to take a tro back to Accra from Cape Coast. We got on, and had a while before it would fill up, and we realized that Petra’s phone was missing. She thought she left it behind at the resort, so she decided to run back to check. No phone. We figured she must have just misplaced it and we would call the resort when we got back.

We got to Accra and got on the tro to Asamankese. We had to wait a whoppin 3 hours for it to fill up! Ridiculous. It seemed long since we just really wanted to go home. There are always these little Chad kids who like to beg from the sides of the trotros while you are waiting and this one guy just KEPT bugging me. He was pinching my arm and hitting me and asking for money. I told him no, but he kept persisting. I did the bigger thing and ignored him for a while. Anyone who knows me knows how hard this was for me. It was hot. I was tired. This child was so annoying that I wanted to bop him in the head. I have a very low tolerance for pestering and my patience is minimal when I am at my best. It was the hardest thing for me to just sit there and pretend he wasn’t hitting me.

Petra was sitting there laughing her head off because I was so frustrated that I was at the point of tears, not because I was sad but because I was so overwhelmed with holding back my temper...haha...oh boy. He finally left.

Petra checked her bag again for her phone just in case, and found the sim card but not her phone. She knew she hadn’t taken her chip out of her phone so we realized that someone had stolen her phone but left her chip behind. She checked her backpack and realized her charger was gone too. AND HER CAMERA. She is pretty disappointed, but we are glad that she hasn’t been taking any pictures and that those aren’t missing. But it really sucks; her phone from home and her expensive camera are both gone.

We got home around 5 in the evening and it felt SOO good to be back. We gave Auntie Joe and Belinda the biggest hugs you could imagine and took nice cold showers. Being home is the best feeling in the world.