Beautiful jungle: Aburi Botanical Gardens and Boti Falls

The last 2 weekends I've gone traveling to some gorgeous places in Ghana where I have had the pleasure of seeing green that is greener by far than any green I have yet seen :)

First, last weekend, I went with Grace, Matt, Katie, and Jenna (all friends from my ISEP group) to see the Aburi Botanical Gardens. This was our first solo tro-tro expedition, so it may be useful to describe the tro-tro. Tro-tros are like the buses of Ghana (and much of Africa, I believe). They are the size of your average minivan, but they have 5-6 rows of thin, cramped seats inside, with foldable seats down the righthand side, so each tro-tro can stuff 12-16 people inside. One guy drives and another seats by the door to slide it open and yell incomprehensibly where the tro-tro is headed. Often you have to rush and push past other potential riders to get a seat; there is no line or anything like it. Once you get your seat, you pay anywhere from 20 pesewas (15 US cents) up to 10 cedis 50 pesewas (that's if you're going all the way to the other end of the country, which is about the size of Oregon, but a lot harder to drive in). Then you relax and watch the action out the window. There are signs that I suppose might be speed limits here, but they seem to just be suggestions. What really regulates the speed of traffic is the abundance of vehicles. Drivers here are incredibly aggressive, as they need to be if they want to get anywhere. You can look out the window in traffic and see another cars bummer inches away from your door and still moving. Our tro-tro actually hit another tro-tro yesterday, in stop and go traffic. The drivers and occupants all yelled at each other and we all moved on. It is also not at all uncommon to be in a tro-tro (especially one that is going somewhere outside the city) and suddenly be driving on a strip of dirt on either side of the road. nor will your tro-tro be alone. Drivers are constantly making new roads on random stretches of dirt on either side of the actual, paved (or not) road.

So now that there is some background for the adventure that is traveling here, you can fully appreciate the pride we had it ourselves when we made it successfully to the Botanical Gardens a few hours later. The gardens were basically a park, with some informative signage, so we just roamed around and took pictures. Here's what we saw!


This box that revealed to us that we have been on the Lost island THE WHOLE TIME


There were some beautiful trees like this one!


A lovely butterfly landed on my hand!


Check out this rooster!


Stuffed in the back of the tro-tro, ready to go home.

Excellent day trip!
This last weekend, Grace, Matt, Alex, Sarah, Eliza, Lianne, Marianne and I went to Boti Falls, which is to the north, farther into the Eastern Region. We took three tro-tros to get there and took a staircase down to the pool at the bottom of the falls, where we proceeded to clamber over all the slippery wet rocks and muddy ground we could find.


Beautiful waterfalls!!


Some steep, slippery rocks we climbed up!


Behind the waterfall!



Alex under a waterfall!


Lianne, Matt, and I

So that was a soaking wet adventure as well! The tro-tro ride here was possibly the most thrilling. Grace and I were in the front seat and we were enjoying the adorable goats that frolicked around the Eastern Region. A group was crossing the road in front of our tro-tro and a little black goat sort of hesitated in the middle. Our tro-tro did not slow down. Grace's and my eyes got bigger. The baby goat didn't move. The tro-tro didn't slow down. At the very last second he jumped out of the way and saved his own life and we were not traumatized and racked with guilt over the death of an adorable baby goat, and thus able to fully enjoy our falls experience!