My first trip!

August 19^th, 2005

What a weekend! A couple friends and I decided to go on a little trip of our own. We decided we have been herded around Ghana in a group of 50 for too long, and we wanted to get our feet wet to Ghana travel. So Thursday afternoon we took off to a little town in Eastern Ghana called Ho. The ride was supposed to take 2-3 hours, but our bus broken down a couple times, but we got there fine and found a room at the local YMCA. Early Friday morning we took a tro-tro (like a mini-van with 20 people shoved in) to a small town in the Eastern Mountains called Amedzofe. It was an amazing little community with which tourists are drawn to for its Eco-tourism (a fascinating method for sustainable development). There is a small tourist office in the center of town—very rare in Ghana, but apparently a previous Peace-Corps volunteer set it up. There we met guides who took us on hikes to a gorgeous!!!!!! waterfall and to the top of one of Ghana's highest mountains (but it's more like a hill). We were also led to lunch at Madame Betty's, the best chef in town; she made us fried yam balls with vegetable stew, it was one of the most amazing meals I have had in Ghana, if not this whole year!

By the time the sunset we were whipped out. We heated up the reminder of our lunch and struck up a conversation with the two other people staying in our guesthouse. They were peace-corps volunteers on vacation. We talked for a long time, about culture shock to Ghana, health, the peace-corps…and they gave us some great travel tips!

Saturday morning we got up at 5:30 am to catch the 5:30-6:30am tro-tro back to Ho. Turns out the tro-tro left at 7:00…welcome to Ghana's time system! Once we got back to Ho, we took another tro-tro to a small village, known for its kenti (you known that famous African cloth) weaving. We bought so cloth and made our way back to Accra. We got to campus around 4:30pm, just in time for an early dinner—fried plantains and baked beans, also known as redd redd! Yum!

More exciting Ghana excursions to come!