Monday, July 1, 2013

Day 7: Mole National Park

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 June 29th… Today was both amazing, and difficult. Jeff got sick, through the night and today not feeling well (worse over night, he started his antibiotic). I am feeling fine so that’s good. They turned the generator off at about 1am, so completely rustic. I didn’t realize until breakfast, when I talked to Chuks (chooks), that the three large buckets by the tub were full of water for bathing (and flushing). We didn’t know what they were??? I wondered and assumed that they were for recycles or garbage… lol Here is a breakdown of the day:

6:20am: Wake up
7 – 9… Jeep Safari! This was amazing! We saw elephants, wart hogs, tons of antelope, baboons (unfortunately I didn’t get a pic since the car was moving), and birds. I did get a nice pic of one beautiful bird, a Bee something… I have to check on the name.
9:30: Breakfast was the usual omelet, toast, jam, beans (cold), and coffee w/sugar and goats milk (every place we have stayed has served the same breakfast, only the omelet is a little different).
Pack up and get ready to leave.
11:30: Hit the road and head for Kumasi (koo-ma-see)
5:00: Stopped for dinner. I had fried rice and chicken. The fried rice here is just like we have at home and they also serve this everywhere. The only difference is that a ground up shrimp sauce is served with it (and a lot of foods) here, usually spicy.
8:30pm: Arrive at our hotel. This time I prayed for running water and AC and thank you Lord, we have a nice place to stay :) We are staying on the college campus. This is the school that also owns the hotel we stayed at in Accra. Having the hotels provides an opportunity for the students going into travel/tourism to get experience in the field.
Anyway, we spent 21 of the last 36 hours in the car… that part was not fun. But, the drive was very interesting. I got some awesome pics of the people, the animals, and close to Mole I got some pics of the traditional old style huts that many people still live in in the villages (there were some fishing villages in Cape Coast where they also lived in this style of hut, but I couldn’t get pics as the taxi driver was going too fast).

Some other things that kept the drive interesting:
·      Never a shortage of goats, sheep, and people for our driver to beep at and dodge (the goats are so funny, they are all over, and they really “hoof” it when they are on the road and a car beeps, lol

·      Pot-holes and speed bumps to avoid. The way back from Mole was better (once we were out of the park) but every town has huge speed bumps, some scrape the bottom of the car.

·      Just North of Kumasi, there was a traffic jam. Our driver decided to follow a couple of other cars and take a back road around. The road was SO bad… dirt, huge pot-holes; he ended up asking for directions when it seemed to come to an end. I thought we may get stuck but we didn’t, we made it back to the main road but wow! That kept everyone awake! Once we got to Kumasi, the traffic was incredible! And people everywhere including moms with their babies bundled on their backs! And people everywhere selling their goods, even in the thick traffic coming out to the cars. It was also lightly raining.



This big guy came right to the camp, where he does almost every morning we were told. What beautiful and amazing creatures!














On the way from Mole to Kumasi: 
A village where the residents still live in the traditional thatched roof huts





The Three Amigos??? hahaha

This cute little boy was enjoying some roasted corn. The goat was enjoying a meal as well :)


These beautiful women were hard at work making women's clothing... they agreed to let me photograph them






A look down the street of this little town where we stopped to stretch


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