Wednesday the 8th of feb Brach n i slept in till 8am... Crazy late. We took our time getting up and then breakfasting. After breakfast we went to the viewing platform and watched gazelles and monkeys and elephants. We then acquired our books and went and chilled by the pool. We swam and read and swam and read until 3.30pm when we went on another walking safari. This one was heaps better than the other one. The guide was friendlier and more knowledgeable. Also there were crocodiles fighting and a bunch of elephants trumpeting together. It was pretty awesome. Also awesome are all the adorable baby warthogs wandering around the motel. Super cute.
Wednesday evening we chilled with 2 girls also travelling around ghana, one from vacouver canada and the other from williamsburg new york. It was great fun drinking and laughing about how terrible the movies are here and how much we all miss vegetables.
We went to bed by 11pm but by 3.30am we were up and quickly dressed so we could catch the only bus of the day out of there and 4am. This then involved 4 hours of dirty dusty bumpy roads and an overcrowded bus to tamale the northern regional capital. I really didn't lik this city though we were quite productive while there. The trouble with tamale is that it's poorer than the other cities so there are fewer cars and more motorcycles which are scary. Furthermore because the north are pastoralists and not agriculturalists food is more expensive there since it has to be imported from the south and there are more beggars since they don't do subsistence farming in the area. This was strange since mostly ghana is devoid of beggars except for the occasional refugee from another country (frequently chad) or if they are disabled and unable to work, but still, pretty uncommon.
So firstly bracha n i set out to find some coffee and toast. Which we did and we lounged about in the restaurant gathering our strength for the day. We then found a hideous public toilet which we wished to never use again (sadly we had to at a later point in the day). We then went to super awesome vodaphone internet cafe which had fast (by ghana standards) internet. After that to the pharmacy to buy anti-worming medication. Before you all get super judgy or grossed out, we as yet have no symptoms but 1) i'm pretty paranoid when it comes to africa and 2) it's common practice here to de-worm every 3 months and i've almost been here 3 months. We then went to the bus station, got ourselves some snacks for our epic 12 hour journey to accra. The bus left at 4pm and played super terrible nigerian movies the whole way. But luckily we were exhausted and napped most of it. But it wasn't quality sleep since frequently there were just bumpy dirt roads so the ride was very uncomfortable.
At 4am we arrived in accra with no idea what to do. 4am in a giant city?! I wasn't feeling great about it. But we asked to get dropped at the main tro tro yard, called circle, and from there we asked the tro tro drivers how we could get to Senya Beraku where we were staying for the weekend. As is always the case in ghana everybody was very friendly and helpful and we easily caught a tro tro to the first location and then a joining one on to Senya beraku. By 6.45am we had arrived at this adorable old slave fort come guesthouse. We were shown our room (20 cedies a night) with its lovely views over the ocean and the awesome toilets/sinks/showers with running water. So exciting. No more bucket showers and pit toilets!
We napped till 8.45am and then had breakfast, after 2 cups of coffee and one cup of tea each we felt much better. After that we slowly got ready to go to the beach. We walked past all the fishermen with their colourful boats to a more quiet beach. But no sooner had we sat down did some guy come up to make friends with us. Once he started telling us about this girl who was falsely claiming to be pregnant with his baby did we bail and continue walking to find another more private beach. Which we found easily belonging to some American guy and his super cute dog. We chilled there, we had books but preferred to chat, we stood in the water but didn't swim since it wasn't really hot enough. Then we grabbed some beans n plantain for lunch and acquired provisions for the sabbath.
I think we are the only guests in the house which is quite nice. Shabz will be spent sleeping (which will be lovely given the past 2 nights of interrupted travel related sleep), reading and walking along the beach. And we have enough bread/drinks/snacks to last us till after shabz.
Sunday morning our plan is to return to accra and organise some final things before our flights on Monday morning.
With that, shabbat shalom.
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