Wednesday 21st – Sunday 25th (Part 1)

The trip that almost never happened ended up being the best of the summer. Andrea and Daan have been looking forward to visiting Mole national park since early June. Problem is it’s like 14 hours away…on a good day. I went from pretty sure I wasn’t going to definitely sure I wasn’t going (after visiting green turtle I was sure I would go back there instead) to absolutely going (after asking around whether it’s worth the trip) till almost not going at all hours before I was supposed to board the bus. Ultimately I was torn between hanging out with Shara and whoever else because she just returned from being away for 3 weekends and going to an amazing place that was really far away. Though Drea probably thinks it was her Fordham law skills that persuaded me it was mostly my friend Andrew’s (from Tufts) road trip across America that inspired me to make the trip. Sure it wasn’t going to be as epic, but we were literally driving clear across the country. I took the trip as a good opportunity to do a mini-road trip, and any animals we saw (which were not a guarantee in the rainy season) would be a bonus.
So after the inevitable sibling bickering about which bus to get on, Me, Drea, Daan and Cristin boarded a 1980’s looking bus with curtains to make the first leg of our trip to Kumasi (roughly half way there). We boarded around 5:15 … I passed out around 5:45 …wake up at 9pm: “ Wtf? We’re still here?”. The blaring of a bad Ghanian movie couldn’t mask the sounds of random vendors banging on the door trying to get passengers to buy refreshments or nicknacks. See the way busses work here is, you don’t leave till it fills up. Unforntuley for is it was a big bus and several buses were going to Kumasi. Even though it was the cheapest it didn’t exactly have prime real estate in the parking lot. About 15 minutes later we were finally off and I feel asleep again (surprisingly I caught up on a lot of sleep on the first leg of our journey). Wake up around 1:45 …still not there yet. Call my Mom who is very much aware of the time difference…get grounded by my dad for “being out so late” haha. We finally arrive at Kumasi station around 2:30. Pay too much for a cab to “Wa station” (only about $1 each, but it was pretty damn close) and are pleasantly surprised to find a pretty crowded outdoor station with Weslife blaring across the street and a woman cooking egg sandwhichs and hot beverages for cheap. First night down and we didn’t even have to pay for a room.
We get our tickets round 4am…more waiting and eventually we’re off to Wa. About 8 hours later we arrive after spending time on the worst roads of all time. Someone made the analogy to riding on a “Shake weight” with wheels. Wa is a pretty low key town in the north. Lots of people riding motos as opposed to driving cars, and no one harassing you to buy things left and right. Cops were really friendly too and gave us directions to Weichu (“we chow”) Station. This part of our journey is actually going a couple hours away from the Mole National Park. Weichu is home to a hippo sanctuary. My limited understanding of sanctuaries is it’s a nature reserve and the animals are free to come and go as they please. The community (and various international volunteers who come and go) maintaining the sanctuary just make sure no one or thing is harming the hippos and they do a survey of the river now and then get a head count. After grabbing some snacks in the near by market, waiting a bunch on the tro for it to leave we set of for Weichu. Correction, these are the worst effing roads I’ve ever been on. Spoiler alert to Aunt Missy, I was in another car accident so you might as well skip down to the part when we see elephants and monkeys if you don’t want to hear about it. For you law school kids our driver was definitely being negligent. To the point where I’m just sitting there going…he’s going to honk his horn right? He’s gonna break yes? Nope. He nearly kamikazes into the back of a pick up truck before veering off the road into a ditch. On our way we teetered dangerously back and forth on either side on two wheels, flirting with the wind to tip us over. I’ve been hardened by my first accident and the everyday dangers of getting to work in the morning so I was actually completely calm and away of my surroundings. I actually tried tipping in the opposite direction a couple times to keep the car from going over completely. Meanwhile there was a crying baby, a pregnant woman, several elderly people, some young woman yelling “Jesus! Jesus” and Andrea repeating hysterically “we’re gonna tip over, we’re gonna tip over”. We didn’t tip over. We just ended up sorta stuck in a ditch on the side of the road. After checking to see If everyone was alright, which did little good because these particular northerners didn’t know or care much for English, I helped push the tro back onto the road (or rather tried but did a rather poor job of it). Luckily we were only about 5 minutes away from the sanctuary. …Stay tuned for the rest of the story coming soon.