Free Travel

For the past week or so, Melissa, Melinda, Joel and I have been backpacking around the Volta Region of Ghana, where there is beautiful scenary, great hiking, and incredibly kind people. After our first day of traffic, waiting for the bus to show up, more traffic, waiting for the bus to get fixed, and even more traffic we finally showed up in Hohoe a little before midnight, about 15 hours after leaving the university that morning (and Hohoe is only about 4 hours away). We stayed in Hohoe that night, and the next morning headed over to Wli. We hiked to some caves and to see both the upper and lower Wli Falls and stayed in the incredible Waterfall Lodge. We spent the next couple nights in the mountains of Biakpa where we slept in tents. The fifth night we stayed in the village of Tafi Atome, and our last night was spent in Ho where we caught the bus at 4am for our smooth commute back to the university.

Looking out from the cave

Going into another cave

Sunrise in Wli

Walking down the path from the hotel

Upper Wli Falls (after the 2 hr climb)

A mound of ants

Lower Wli Falls (after the descent)

Joel learning to carve

Relaxing at the amazing Waterfall Lodge with some Milo and tea

Our tent at Mountain Paradise in Biakpa

One of several waterfalls around Biakpa

Looking out the window in Tafi Atome

The kids watching the monkeys...and us. This was shortly after they brought me a baked yam that was probably the best I had in Ghana.

Kente weaving

Kumasi

Our Calvin group spent a couple days in Kumasi just prior to our free travel time. Our hotel turned out to be really shabby and we didn't have running water for the couple days we were there. I had my own room that was barely bigger than my bed and had walls that were probably half an inch thick. Really, they would bend if you touched them. Although it wasn't the nicest place, I really ended up enjoying it. The workers were really nice and were fun to hang out with. Two of them taught me a game one night and we played a game of pool with them. There were also some cool people staying there and we played quite a lot of cards at night. Kumasi has the largest market in West Africa and I spent several hours walking through it on two seperate days. It was a pretty cool experience and there was lots of stuff. We also went to the Coca Cola Bottling Plant of Ghana one of the days and saw how they produced the drinks and bottled them. It was fun and we all got to wear lab coats, hair nets and goggles during the tour. We also got free Orange Fantas, their product for the day. We visited a museum in what used to be an Ashanti palace. It had a lot of things that belonged to the past Ashanti chiefs. There were also peacocks wandering around the lawn. While we were in Kumasi, we also were able to see how kente cloth and adinkra cloth are made. Kente cloth, especially, is something that the Ashantis are very well known for. Overall, I think we all had a really good time in Kumasi.