the road to and from mole

1. us and our fully armed safari guide PK who's been working at mole for 20 years!
2. yours truly and ELEPHANT BEHINDS!

the elephants were worth it but wow, i am never going to northern ghana again! last tuesday morning liz, my sis and i woke at 5am to do some laundry and head off on our big adventure to the north. caught a 2-hour tro to accra and waited at the bus station for 3 hours (supposed to be 11am bus but it was delayed 2 hours for technical problems. didn't ask!). we sat on this non-AC overly stuffed bus from 2pm until 3am (yes! 13 hours of dusty bumpy grossness with pitstops at nasty urinals where i peed slightly on my pants and sandals a couple of times! i'm a pro at squat toilets in taiwan, but in africa, there aren't even holes, they are just...troughs with no stalls. it's hard going for girls!)

when we arrived in tamale it was creepy at 3am. we semi- slept for an hour on benches at the passenger waiting area and then walked to another bus station where crowds of people were already getting in line for the bus to mole. this ride was even sweeter: for 3-4 hours i sat on a metal bar, had to pee half the time going over even bumpier dirt roads, while a man sold crazy cure-all medicine in the front of the bus. he talked the entire time! i would fall asleep and wake up and he's still blabbering. his medicine could apparently heal blindness, baby's aches and pains, make your hair longer, make women's chests' bigger, as well as viagra-esqe effects for the men. the crazy thing is he made a killing on the bus! everyone was buying up the magic cream.

when we arrived at the town of larabanga there was no public transport to the national park. it was 10am. we had been traveling 24 hours ...and then decided to rent shoddy rusty bicycles from local boys for the 6km road to the park (it was either that or pay a LOT for them to take us on motorbikes). it was actually really nice! when you havn't slept properly and smell really bad, riding on a bike makes you feel light and breezy and delirious. shio's bike chain got detached of course but a nice man on the road fixed it. we took pictures as we biked and i fell from laughter in the process.

mole national park was wonderful! there was a platform over a high cliff where you could watch the animals congregate around two waterholes: antelope, elephants, warthogs, etc...like discovery channel LIVE next to your hotel! went swimming, ate yummy food by the pool, made friends with really nice british boys (we played cards and talked all night. taught them Da Er (big two) a chinese card game), and went on TWO safaris. the guided tours cost 14,000 cedis each time. that is not even 2 dollars to walk in big plastic booties through swamps and track large african mammals! the warthogs were hairy and hilarious. reminded me of pumba from lion king! liz and i decided we have to watch all the disney movies when we get home. the elephants as predicted were the prime attraction. they are larger than life and flap their ears making a fun "Thwack" sound and just so amazing! in the morning baboons were hopping around outside our window! it was a wildlife dream come true! we didn't want to leave. but...

the next morning we rode our bikes in pouring rain back to larabanga. got a quasi-tour of the oldest mosque in ghana (this random teenager spouted off facts in a hard to understand accent) the mosque was pretty. too bad we weren't allowed inside. we waited half an hour and a wonderful spanish woman with her ghanian bf let us ride in their taxi to a junction two hours away. without them...we might still be in larabanga. when they dropped us off at the junction it was late afternoon. we waited in the dry heat for over two hours (i showed the local girls how to shuffle cards and read a book).

GET READY FOR THE BEST PART OF OUR TRIP:
we were ridiculously happy when a tro finally arrived heading toward kumasi (8 hours away). when we crammed in the backseat (the tiniest seats ever, and i'm a small asian girl) we noticed that the window (a gaping 5 foot hole) had no glass. oh well, it was a nice breeze. about 30 minutes into the ride though, an enormous bucket full of liquid splashed in from the roof, hitting the old lady in front of us squarly in the face and splattering us. we were so confused. it wasn't raining. where did it come from? maybe it was just rain water. 20 minutes later, we hear baa-ing and hooves on the roof. omg there are live goats on the roof! they do this all the time up north, transport livestock on roofs of tros.

so.. from them on... the goats would pee and splash into the window like every 30 minutes for the next 8 hours!! we would go over really big bumps and they were BAAAA and then PEE! and it was sooo disgusting. thank god shio had her ugly EMS rain hat to cover her, but it was still spraying us and all over liz's pashmena. we wanted to cry and sleep! but ended up just laughing hysterically while keeping ourselves covered.

to top it off when we finally arrived in kumasi at 1 in the morning no one would get off the bus. we were so confused. weren't we at our destination? turns out that kumasi is full of robbers at night. women and able-bodied young men alike warned us not to leave the bus: the taxi drivers would rob us, who knows what might happen. so that's how all 40 passengers (crying babies too) ended up sleeping (on a slant cause the bus was parked on a slope) with the smell of goat pee on us, as well as really pungent urinal smell in the station, in tight upright tro seats for 3 more hours. finally at 4am when mosque chanting could be heard we were told it was safe to go. a nice ghanian named Isaac who slept on the bus next to us walked us to the market (which was bumpin at 5am!). another warm-hearted stranger we met on the street when we asked for directions told us it was still too dangerous for us to walk alone. he drove us in his vehicle to our hotel. thank god for the kindness of strangers. when we arrived to the hotel with working AC and shower it was heaven.