Might just be my favorite (favourite)weekend!

This weekend was absolutely amazing! We got up on Friday morning, bright and early and headed out. We requested the driver from the Mole trip because he was awesome. We were told he was going to go but not be the driver. We go out to the van and James, the driver, is all excited. It was a great greeting. This culture is very hospitable. The take our bags and pack the van. Yes, I said van. We took a van. There are 11 of us, 2 drivers, and all of our luggage including two cases of water to fit into a 16 person van. Sounds like a big van, but the poor guy in the back was squished in with all the luggage because there is basically no trunk space. It was way different from our nice charter bus we had going to Mole. I think each of us felt car sick at one point or another. There were a few who acted on the sickness, including one girl we had to take care of business as we were driving down the road at say 75 or so MPH. Oh the experiences we are having! Finally, we got to the Monkey Sanctuary! So cool! We drive down this crazy 2 track one lane road then it opens up to the Monkey Sanctuary. We meet our guide and get right to our tour. Our guide comes over and starts making this kissing like noise and all these monkeys come over. We were standing at the edge of the forest and one monkey jumped on a girl. She screamed and he took off. We all started cracking up. We had no idea the monkeys were that comfortable with people. The guide then gave us bananas and showed us how to feed to monkeys. We had to hold the bananas really tight and the monkeys we jump on your arm and sit on it while they watched you and peeled the banana and took the banana and ran off. They were so cute and little. It might be my highlight of the weekend. After we finished with the monkeys, we headed to the falls. We got there and had lunch which was great! Then we changed our clothes and headed to Wli Falls. It was about a 40 or so min walk back to the falls, which to my surprise, was rather dirty. A lot of trash, like water bottles and water bags (a very popular way to drink water.) As we area walking back to the falls, we start to hear really load music. The walk back is through the forest and on a path that that is pretty tight, as in you make a wrong step and you will be falling down a little cliff. Not sure why we kept hearing this music, then, as we are almost at the falls, we see that there is this big party going on. There is like a DJ system, catered food, and massive amounts of people all in the middle of this forest. Very interesting. We get to the falls and take our shoes off and head in. This is the biggest water fall in Ghana, so you can imagine that the water coming down is coming down pretty hard and it was! Regardless, we walked over to the falls with the water hitting up like a bunch of little needles. It was PHEMONAL. We slowly made our way behind the falls which wasn’t much of a different between being under the falls. We couldn’t open our eyes and just hung on to the wall, but we were cracking up the whole time we were back that. We definitely drank a lot of the water, hope we don’t get sick! After swimming in the falls, we walked back to the village. We stopped at some little shops. I bought some pretty cool things and the best part is I bought them from the lady who made them! Love that! Then we went back showered and headed to dinner. Dinner was great. It was meatballs, which were hamburger shaped but tasted great. It tasted somewhat like meatballs but better. The herbs or something were really fresh. I also had mashed potatoes and a stewed tomatoes type thing, which was heated so I could eat it! I am really missing my vegetables! The place we stayed at was started by a “friendly German couple,” which is how they are known. They still run the place today, in fact, the wife of the couple took our orders, and then she went and sat down at the table next to ours with her husband and some friends. It was unique, but a great time. Our huts we stayed in were great! It was really a hut, only modern. It was very nice! The water pressure was great; we have very little water pressure in the village. After packing up, we headed to breakfast, which was good. After everyone finished eating, we loaded into the van and headed to the highest mountain in Ghana/another waterfall. The guide book said it was a roughly two hour rounded trip for the mountain and a 45mins leisure walk to the falls. The roads are crazy here and a few of us were not feeling so good, but 8 of us headed up the mountain and 3 people headed to the falls. As we were starting to head up this very steep path to the top, one girl said she didn’t feel good and was going to go back. She was also the girl that stayed with me when I didn’t feel good, so I headed back with her. Once we got back to the fork in the road to go to the mountain or the falls, we asked some guy standing there if there was only one path to the falls. He pointed with his machete and said falls. Not sure he understood us, but we started on the path anyway. There was only one place that was slightly questionable as to which way we should go but when we seen the bridge was nearly collapsed and the path on the other side was basically gone, we continued straight. We never really seen any animals, heard someone chopping down a tree with a machete, the tool of choice here. Based on the fact that we were told it was a 45min walk, Connie and I started to get worried when we hadn’t see the falls after walking for 40mins. We came across a small little fall and Connie asked if that was the falls. It was a good laugh considering that we were starting to wonder if we were now in Togo. (This trip put us very close to the border and we were told there are no markings letting you know you crossed the border.) We kept walking and shortly came across the falls which were BEAUTIFUL! It was a very warm walk. We were roasting by the time we got there, so the mist from the falls was great! We stayed at the falls for awhile. The falls were more relaxing than Wli Falls. The falls are not as much of a tourist attract. We were the only people back there. These falls are also very sacred. It is considered to be a fertile falls. And if a woman is experiencing her monthly time and touches the water, she will continue to have her monthly time until she returns to the falls and asks to be blessed. The old man giving us the information before we left basically asked the girls not to swim if they were having their monthly time. On Friday, you cannot wash your clothes in the river. They do not allow soap in the river on Friday. It was neat to see how important a water system is to a culture. After we finished with our pictures, we followed the guide, who was about 12 years old in flip flops, back to the village. He was running up these steep rock cliffs like it was no big deal while all of us in our boots are taking baby steps trying to find our footings. A few times we had to jump over Solider Ants, which we learned about in Mole. If they bite, they hurt. Any ant bite you get here REALLY hurts. As we were walking back, we also found out that when the group was walking back to the falls with the guide, they had to stop for snakes. Snakes get the right away. This was something Connie and I were very glad that we did not think about as we were taking our own little adventure walk to the falls. Once we got back, we found that the, to our surprise, the mountain climbers of the group were back already. They said it was one of the hardest climbs of their lives. It was straight up, which meant it was straight down. Many said they spent a lot of time on their butts on the way down. They also changed because they were so sweaty. James, the bus driver, pretty much ran up the mountain and barely broke a sweat. This guy is great. He is probably 45 or so and has so much energy. Eric, the other bus driver, who is about our age, said he will never climb the mountain again. After we relaxed for a second, we loaded into the bus and headed to Frankie’s. It was definitely out of our way to go, but we all really wanted a nice burger for dinner. It was great. Now, I am sitting at school waiting to go to our meeting then lunch. I don’t have school tomorrow because it is a Muslim Holiday! Excited to relax and go to the pool tomorrow or maybe shopping!