volta.
This past weekend, the members of the Pentagon hostel and homestay kids went on a CIEE fieldtrip to the Volta Region of Ghana. After a night of being out until an hour before the bus left (a story I shall tell another time), I fell asleep instantly: head bob, drool and all next to Aly.
Four hours later, I wake up to green. Seeing green after being in Accra for so long is always so refreshing. I seem to never think I will see green again. Especially when I go from brown, smoggy Accra to a rainforest I feel like my breath and brain are not stifled by smoke and gas.
Anyways, we get out of the bus and straight to a walk in the rainforest with a guide who showed us pineapples growing, rivers flowing and saved us from fighting snakes. After about 45 minutes, we walk into a clearing, and past that clearing is the tallest waterfall I have ever seen. Photos (which I will put up when I have patience to put them up) could not do the grandiosity of this waterfall justice. The way the light caught the top made it look truly magical. We swam underneath it and the water was freezing, and hurt my head as the water fell on it from hundreds of feet above me. We imagined later that a rock falling down that waterfall would kill us instantly. But that thought might take away from the enchanting experience.
After the rainy walk back through the rainforest, over nine wooden bridges, back on the bus to a monkey sanctuary. Now I thought this monkey sanctuary would be more like a zoo with only primates, but it was nothing of the sort. From what I understood about the story, this sanctuary was started to raise money for the village, and to save the monkeys in it. We walked through the forest for not 10 minutes and we saw a pack of medium sized monkeys swinging on trees and everything. We all fed them bananas. So stereotypical but I obviously enjoyed it, especially after taking an entire class on human evolution last semester and learning everything about primates.
Then back to the hotel for a relaxing rest of the weekend. We had Sunday morning free, so Aly and I laid in the hotel beds with real mattresses and pillows and watched Spanish soap operas dubbed in English all morning. Beautiful
