Crazy to think in two weeks I'll be home! This past week Katie and I went on a trip to the east coast, Accra (the capital) and Aburi, which is a city just north of Accra in the foothills. It was super awesome, had an excellent time!
This is the mouth of the Volta river, the major water (and power) source in Ghana. These are the boats people in the villages use to fish, both on the river and the sea. They are around 50-70 feet long and hand made. Each is painted very brightly, and different from the next.
This is the view of the beach camp we stayed at from our canoe taxi down the Volta. The sea is about 500yds behind the huts!
These boys ended up terrorizing us the whole weekend! In a good way....
I showed them how to use their tubes as trumpets... pretty sure their mom hates me!
View down the Volta . The guys in the boats are prepping the fishing nets.
Pulling in the fishing nets
Beach side sunset... not too shabby!
So this giant truck(s) ran all day back and forth. They are opening up the estuary so that more salt water can come up into the Volta to help kill some water borne illnesses in the area. Then they haul the sand up the beach a way and are building a sea defense, which is basically a giant sand wall. Apparently several of the villages on the strip between the sea and the river are being washed away!
Our hut was the one on the right!
These dogs belong to the beach camp, but became Our Dogs for the 4 days we were there! From front to back they are Ralph, Harry and Harriet. They hung out with us the whole time, slept outside our hut, went on walks with us, and even kept other dogs from sniffing our food!
This is me helping the guys haul in the net! Pretty hard work. It's interesting though, when it comes to hauling a net, anyone near by comes to help, and at the end they are given a fish our two!
Katie specifically took this picture so it looked like I was doing it by myself! ;)
This guy is working on opening the mouth of the estuary then fills the dump trucks. Not the beachiest sight ever, but pretty cool!
Not entirely sure why that kid was holding a duck over his head...
This was on our boat tour around the lake so see the islands and the estuary.
This was a little village. It was strange. On one side of the river was villages in mud huts, and the other side had giant houses with speed boats, weekend homes for rich Accra residents. Crazy. This is the village where we stopped to go to a rum distillery. Looked very much like a moonshine process, but quite delicious!
This cheeky little guy saw I had a camera and "worked it" for like 15 minutes...
The village kids come over to the camps regularly to hang out with obruni. We were playing a drawing game.
Mothers carry children on their back, and often little girls carry littler ones too!
This is the night that we made an important discovery... Rainy season and Straw hut don't mix well. We spent the night sleeping in out coats, huddled under an umbrella with our camera etc. on a soaking wet bed. Quite interesting!
As you can see.... 2 am was a bit of a shock to us! We weren't stark raving mad... just felt like it!
This was at the botanical gardens in Aburi. This tree ended up growing around another tree until it killed it.
This is looking up into that tree. It's hollow inside where the original tree rotted out!
This is a termite mound, about 7 ft tall.... creepy.
This is the road leading into the gardens.
The view from the gardens, down the mountain to the outskirts of Accra.
This dilapidated helicopter was just chilling in the middle of the gardens, and we thought there might be a cool story to it. It was brought in the mid 70s to the portion of the park that was a children playground. After multiple injuries, they closed the park, and left the helicopter. Not nearly as cool as I would have liked, but still kinda neat!
The view from our hotel of Accra at night.
We did a mountain bike trek the next day through a couple villages and the rainforest a bit. Then we hiked a couple miles in to this waterfall!
View from the mountain into the valley. Accra is right past the hills.
Katie and I had a lot of fun. However, I think it's safe to say spending four months laying around, eating jollof rice and drinking beer did not prepare us for a 10 mile ride UP A MOUNTAIN in the heat!
Well.... two weeks from tomorrow I'll be home. Crazy to think, really. I am excited, but I know there are some things I'll miss about Ghana!
Sending my love and best wishes!
Briana
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