In the Jungle the Mighty Jungle

Pictures speak a thousand words and our picasa album will tell our weekend best. We left Friday for a 2 hour bus ride to the city of Ho. After 9 hours on a bus, we learned that many Ghanaians think everything is 2 hours away (Fun Fact #1). Ho is located in the Volta Region, which is northeast of Accra (where we are staying); in terms of distance it would be like traveling from Atlanta to Ashville. Our bus pulled in late at night and we scurried to find the first vacancy available at a hotel. Somehow we managed to find the very posh Freedom Hotel for a very cheap price and we had air conditioning for the first time since we arrived in Ghana!! Having become acclimated to the hot weather, we nearly froze to death Friday night. Saturday morning we woke up and realized that we had actually stayed at a bed and breakfast… free food is the best surprise in the world!! After our ‘free’ meal we took a true 2 hour bus ride to Wli Falls.
Wli Falls is the highest waterfall in Western Africa. Some poster we saw said that Wli Falls could be anywhere from 20m to 400m… kind of a big range, so we don’t actually know how high we climbed, but judging from the pictures and our muscle soreness, it was quite high! While at Wli Falls we met a friend Natalie. Natalie is from Australia, taught in London for a year, worked in Tanzania for a few months, currently is in Ghana for the month, and plans to finish the trip with a tour of eastern Africa (education friends… there’s definitely some cool opportunities out there!). So Matt, Lael, Natalie and I set on our journey led by our local tour guide Jonathan, who hiked the whole mountain in a pair of flip flops.
As we were surrounded by thick vegetation and animals we have never seen I realized ‘WOW!! I am hiking in the African jungle’. In short, our senses were overwhelmed. We saw scenery more beautiful than anything we’ve seen, heard animals we’ve never heard, and felt more exhausted than we’ve ever felt on a hike. The pictures will tell the rest of the story, so check out http://picasaweb.google.com/DavidYeeChen/Ghana2010?feat=directlink.