A Million Minutes in Africa

Okay, so we finished our Tour de Ghana over a month ago, but we are only now finishing blogging about it. Sorry.

From Sirigu, we toured around the surrounding area. Near a little village called Bongo, there is a large balancing rock at the top of a hill that resonates when struck. We asked a couple of kids to take us there, but soon more kids joined us till there were about 15. Fortunately, they were nice kids. Some of them did a little dance for us while others “played” the rock. Here’s how they might look on an album cover.

Our jaunt through Tongo and Tengzug was less enjoyable. When we opted not to take a paid tour, a man on a bicycle chased us down to make sure we didn’t get out of the car to take photos on our own. Can a person photograph balancing rocks in the sunset without paying? Apparently not in Tongo/Tengzug.

That night we slept in a hotel in Tamale. Woke up with a mysterious, itchy rash on my arm. Emily had a salve for me to apply to it, thank goodness. Hooray for thoughtful friends and Smile’s Prid Homeopathic Salve.  Boo for crummy hotels.
We decided to return to Accra via the Volta region rather than retracing our steps. Although the description of the Tamale-Bimbilla-Nkwanta-Hohoe route in the guidebook was discouraging, we were determined and resigned ourselves to an all-day drive. Well, I guess the road has improved a great deal since the book was written because travel time was a LOT faster than we expected. Dusty, though.

The Volta region is greener and hillier than the north, and we enjoyed seeing the different landsape. After a night in Hohoe, we headed to the Mountain Paradise Lodge in Biakpa. They have basic accomodations with no electricity, but it’s actually pretty nice. We took a guided hike. Parts of it were challenging and even required a rope.

On the same hike we came across a mound of earth that had something cooking inside of it. It turned out to be charcoal. We learned that charcoal does not come from the supermarket or hardware store after all.
The man who made the charcoal farms cocoa and cassava in the area. He also makes his own palm oil, the most commonly used cooking oil here. Dan raised a bottle with him.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 7:43 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.