We left on Accra Friday. Marianne and Bobby and Wilder had hooked us up with an overnight bus, which was actually super nice. There was air-conditioning (full blast the whole trip, of course) and comfy seats and a few TVs that played this shrill Ghanaian movie). So even though we weren't exactly feeling fresh when we got off the bus in Tamale at 8:00 Saturday morning, we were pretty upbeat.
The plan was to get a bite to eat, which we did at the nice little Tamale Cultural Center
Hang around the Cultural Center shopping and chatting for a bit,
And wait at the bus stop for the 1:30 bus to Mole (pronounce Moe-lay, by the way) National Park bus to come.
We waited
And waited
And waited
Now most of Tamale was nice, less hot and more friendly and less dirty than Accra. We liked the city a lot more than other Ghanaian cities. But the bus station soon became a torturous purgatory of trash, smelly outhouses, sun, and dust for which we would never escape. Bobby and I had recently read Percy Jackson and we were convinced we were in some sort of alternate reality, with time passing around us and everyone we love growing old while we sat at the bus station and wished there were tro-tros, which would have put us at Mole hours ago. But the Northern Region has no tro-tros (its major flaw), so we were forced to wait until 5:30, when our bus finally came.
THE NEXT DAY!
Okay, so we woke up on our super comfortable beds (which we occasionally shared with bugs, but whatever, its Africa) at 6:30 for our morning safari walk through the park!
Off we go!
We saw all sorts of animals! Elephants, which Mole s best known for,
Antelope!
And warthogs, who weren't shy about hanging out by our hotel rooms
I wore my safari hat!
After the walkign safari, we had a delicious breakfast at the motel and hung out for a bit on the viewing deck, which overlooked a watering hole that attrached more elephants!
Then, we hired a Jeep to take us 15 km away to Mogori Eco Village for a canoe ride and village tour!
We alternated who got to ride on top, which was The Most Fun!
Heading out on our canoe trip!
Katie and I in the canoe
River beauty
In the village...
The village is one of Ghana's ecot-ourism projects in action. These programs seem to be working really well in the country. Aside from being my favorite experiences in Ghana (here and in the Tafe Atome Monkey Sanctuary especially), they really help fight rural poverty. The people in Mogori have had troubles. Not only is the area pretty hard to get to (4 hour drive on terrible roads to Tamale) and therefore hard to sell the products of their agriculture from, but the animals from Mole tend to ruin their crops. The eco-tourism does a lot to supplement the villages income, though, and they are hoping to save enough money to buy a lorry and bring people to the village (renting a Jeep is pretty expensive unless you have a big group, thus making it an impractical trip for some tourists to the area). It's really cool to see how happier, better fed, and more relaxed people in these villages are. Oh and also, it encourages (financially and socially) the people to conserve the natural resources rather than selling them for money to buy food. Hooray eco-tourism!
Here we are meeting the village herbalist. He's the cheif's brother and is 97 years old. Seriously.
They decorate the mud houses like this. It used to mean something, but now it's just pretty.
View of the village from on top of the chief's roof!
When we got back from the village, we ate a delicious meal of Wakkye (black-eyed peas and rice, with an egg and tomato sauce)
Swam in the pool,
and watched the sunset (while listening to Circle of Life on Katie's iPod)
The next day was a seriously intense mismanagment of travel and we were unable to see the hippo sanctuary. That was okay, because we were so tired that all we wanted was to return to ISH... and, to make a long story short, we finally did!
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