A Million Minutes in Africa

On to leg three of our Tour de Ghana. We left the Baobeng-Fiemi Monkey Sanctuary Guesthouse, stopped in Techiman for lunch, and reached Bui National Park before sunset. We camped near the river with many blackflies for company. They loved biting my hands in particular. My left hand alone had 10 itchy bites on it. The blackflies didn’t keep us from enjoying a game of cards on the dock, though.

We were up bright and early to go see some hippos. Our guide, Peter, led us to a spot where 13 hippos basked in the river. One of them let out quite a yawn.

Every once in a while, a hippo would make an incredibly loud, scary sound, like a roar. I had never heard such a sound before. We’re not sure if they were angry or happy or just saying howdy to their friends.

The road from the river back to the park headquarters is extremely rough (Dan’s favorite kind of road).

On the way, we passed a village. Our guide’s kids ran out of the school to say hello to him, and soon all the other kids followed.

René took the opportunity to play some soccer.

The second leg of our Tour de Ghana took us from Lake Bosumtwi to Baobeng-Fiemi Monkey Sanctuary.

Along the way we passed between the two halves of a giant tree.

We’ve seen a lot of big trees cut down or bulldozed down, sometimes due to the widening of roads and sometimes for purposes unknown to us. What a shame. [Read about our own neighborhood’s loss of several near-hundred-year-old trees on our friends’ blog.]

The villages of Baobeng and Fiema are part of the sanctuary. The monkeys are sacred to the people here.

The sanctuary is home to 2 species of monkey: mona monkeys and black-and-white colobus monkeys. The monas spend a lot of time on the ground and come quite near people. We saw a lot of mothers and babies. The babies hold onto the mothers’ tummies as the mothers bound from ground to branch to other branch.

Looking for colobus monkeys, who tend to stay high up in the trees, we explored the sanctuary’s trails. We saw many, but too high up to get good photos.

Saw some beautiful trees, including mahogany, kapok, dahome, and ficus. This huge ficus once encompassed another tree, upon which the ficus was a parasite.  Now the other tree has died, and the ficus trunk has a space in the middle big enough for a person to stand in.

We're back from our Tour de Ghana. We'll do a series of blog posts about it, beginning with the first leg. On Saturday the 13th, we left Accra and headed northwest to the Ashanti region. We stopped in Bonwire ... [Continue reading this entry]

We are going to take a lap of the country.  Be back Jan. 25 if you want to come over and rob the place.  Just watch out for the robot pit bull.  Oh yeah, and the flying scorpions that are ... [Continue reading this entry]

After we left the Hans Cottage Botel, we headed north to Kakum National Park. Much of the park is protected rainforest. It's famous for its canopy walkway. Forest elephants and colobus monkeys live ... [Continue reading this entry]

Our friends René and Emily arrived in Ghana on Jan. 2. Hooray! It's great to have them here. They hung around Accra for a few days, during which we gave them a mini-tour of the city. ... [Continue reading this entry] Posted in Travel | 1 Comment » New Year’s Eve Eve in Ada Foah Thursday, January 4th, 2007 We returned to Ada Foah, the place where we went sailing a while back, on Dec. 29 and 30. We stayed in a house with 2 friends. The house has a little covered deck jutting over the water. ... [Continue reading this entry] Posted in Travel | 1 Comment » Xmas Eve Mountain Biking Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 We returned to the hills of Aburi after hearing about Ghana Bike Tours from our friends. We selected one of about a dozen possible rides. Each ride was charted for elevation changes, distance and time ... [Continue reading this entry] Posted in Travel | 2 Comments » A Million Minutes in Africa is designed by BootsnAll, the Indie Travel Network BootsnAll Travel Blogs Log In Blog Authors Administrator Visit Random Member Random Group Random Blog