Monday July 2, 2012  Africa:  Day 22

            This may have been one of the most amazing days I have ever had.  I lost track of how many times I stopped myself to ask, “how did this become my life!?!”.  We all got up early and took a tro tro to the bus stop in the little town near the monkey sanctuary that we went to on Saturday night.  As we got off the bus, there were not taxis waiting for us to take us down the three mile dirt road to the sanctuary.  Instead there was a group of motorbike drivers that offered this service.  We all hopped on the back of their bikes and drove to see the monkeys.  We took a little tour through the absolutely beautiful jungle. I just can’t get over how many different colors of green can exist on so many different types of trees, vines, and plants.  At one point we all stopped so we could feed the little Mona monkeys bananas.  I stood at the base of the tree with an unpeeled banana for a couple of minutes while the guide made a loud kissing sound. Soon a little monkey climbed down a limb in front of me, peeled the top of the banana while I held the rest in my hand, and proceeded to enjoy the fruit while I stood there waiting for him to finish.

            We walked around the shops in the village just outside the sanctuary and I bought some beautiful purple batik fabric that hopefully will be made into a skirt soon by a local tailor.  Our next destination were a couple of hikes at the top of a mountain relatively near the monkey sanctuary.  We were originally planning to take a taxi or a tro tro to the village near the trail heads, but we found out that this would be hard to do.  Instead, the motorcycle drivers offered to drive us up the mountain.  It was incredible!  We sped along a road that wound its way to the highest village in Ghana.  The views were beyond description.  The whole way we were treated with views of the lush green mountains and overlooks of the beautiful valleys below. 

            Our first hike was to the Mt. Gemi. This town was started by German missionaries, and they erected a large cross at the top of a hill just outside the village.  We all commented that the scenery looked like Scotland because the hill was completely covered in tall green grass.  The view from the top looked out over the entire valley.  You could see small villages tucked away in various parts of the valley.  It reminded me so much of standing on top of various peaks in Utah, but then the palm trees poking out among the other growth quickly reminded me that I was standing in Africa. On our walk back we could hear people sitting in a little grove of trees singing some kind of African worship song.  It just added that much more to the whole experience.

            I fell in love with the village.  The pace was slow.  I wasn’t constantly being accosted by people trying to sell me things or ask for money.  The little houses were tucked away in the middle of this cloud forest.  People were walking back and forth from their farms carrying loads of corn, baskets of firewood, and some people (even women and children) were seen walking with giant logs balanced perfectly on their heads.

            We ate a delicious meal of a bean dish that we sucked out of the little plastic bags they serve street food in.  Then we started our next hike to a waterfall.  This turned out to be more of an adventure than we had anticipated, and definitely one of the most amazing hikes I have ever done.  We decided to take a guide at the last minute, but we weren’t sure that it would be necessary because the first hike we went on was pretty simple and the directions to find the trail were easy to follow.  I don’t think we could have done this second hike without our local friend showing us the way. 

            We started the hike by walking through the town, past a giant calabash tree, and through some corn fields.  Soon the vegetation got thicker and we began to walk along a picturesque river that was often hard to see because of the giant trees and vines that lined the banks.  Just as we started walking into the jungle, it started to rain making the dirt become a muddy slippery slide.  At one point we had to walk some rocks in order to cross over the small river.  I think I was feeling a little too confident at this point, and misjudged my footing on one of the stepstones.  The next thing I knew half of my body was immersed in the river.  In my true germophobic fashion, I immediately jumped up in fear of getting some freshwater jungle disease and was kind of confused why everyone seemed more worried about the possibility that I had been injured.  Fortunately the only thing that got injured was my pride (and I haven’t seen any signs of snail disease…yet).   It was also convenient that it began raining even harder right after that moment so that all of me looked wet and not just the side that fell in the river.

            As we walked further into the jungle, we soon saw ropes being held up by metal poles stuck into the ground.  I quickly realized that the ropes were there because the trail got really steep and rocky.  It would be a difficult trail to traverse normally, but the mud added a whole new dimension of adventure.  I was literally using the ropes at certain points as my life line, and I tried not to wonder about the stability of the ropes or how well the poles were put in the ground. 

           I felt like Tarzan using the ropes to get me down the trail to the waterfall.  It was quite intense, but the reward at the end was more than I had imagined.  We all stood at the base of this waterfall that came running down a high jungle cliff.  The water continued down a little canyon in the midst of all the thick jungle growth.  I just kept looking around in every direction wondering if this all could be real, and wasn’t just some elaborate movie set.  The rain had finally stopped just as we reached the waterfall, so we didn’t have the sheets of rain obstructing our view anymore. I definitely need to go back to this place again someday.  I fell in love with the trees, flowers, and the sounds of the birds singing over the roar of the waterfall.

            The hike back up was much easier because we weren’t fighting gravity as much as we used the ropes to help us up the muddy rock path.  We were drenched to the skin by the time we got back to the village, even though the sun had come out for most of the return hike.  The guy that runs the visitor’s center (which was a small little building with a desk on one side and a bookshelf of jewelry and other random souveniers on the other) let us change our clothes in this room.  He just shut all the shutters and the front door and joined all the other village men that seem to spend their day just hanging out on the patio in front of this building.  We girls put on dry clothes first, and then Stephen got to change before we began our long journey back to Accra.  

                 We took a taxi back down the mountain to Ho.  We stood in the busy bus station  (which, again, is just a big parking lot with vans and vendors) waiting to find the next tro tro that was going back to Accra.  After more than an hour we learned that no one was sure if there was going to be another bus going that direction tonight.  We weighed our options of spending another night in this town or taking up the bus station manager’s offer of hiring us a private car to take us back.  Once we realized that the price would be about the same, we piled in a little car (all four of us girls had to share the back seat) for the three hour ride back to Accra.  This incredible day of monkeys, motorcycle rides, and hikes to mountaintops and through jungles makes it really hard to want to return to real life tomorrow.  I think I may just move to the village in the cloud forest one day.