Adventure

The rose colored glasses are beginning to slide down my profusely sweating nose here in Ghana. Nothing that will rescind my previous statements about all of the greatness Accra has to offer, but I'm ready to get back to dysfunction that I quasi understand and local languages that I know for sure I'm getting ripped off in.

The morning started out hilarious enough. I had just got out of the shower and was standing in my towel brushing my teeth when the sink faucet came completely off in my hand. I call Katherine into the bathroom as a fountain shoots from the sink. As I'm trying to control the water from spewing everywhere Katherine calls the front desk. She returns to help me and when we hear a knock at the door Katherine attempted to run to open the door and slipped on the water almost killing herself. A maid calmly came in and turned off the water. Obviously the water controls behind the sink don't actually control the sink, the knobs behind the toilet do. This was at approximately 8am. We left for the entire day and came back at 4pm to no progress. At 4:45pm two men come to fix the sink at 6:30pm we finally have water back in our room and a working sink.

After the initial sink incident we headed out for Accra's main garage to catch some public transportation out of the city to a nearby beach village. The garage is huge and trying to find the correct trotro, the Ghanaian version of a sept-place or Alham in Senegal, was not an easy task. The garage is actually on two sides of a highway so we went back and forth over the pedestrian bridge a few times before finding the correct car and being given the seat of honor/ scariest seats in the car - the front seat. Trotros are what I would categorize in the US as a "raper van." In the US they would usually be white and are van that one would haul things around in. Here, they have several rows of seats. Katherine and I both thought they were more comfortable and that we had more room in a trotro than in a sept-place back in Senegal.

With the help of a very nice Ghanaian women we exited the trotro on the side of the road near the taxi stand that we needed to take to get to the beach. We got in a shared taxi with a couple other Ghanaian people and made our way to a beach town called Krokrobite. The towns/ villages we passed resembled those in Senegal and the roads outside of Accra are equally as bad. Everyone we've met in Ghana has told us to go to Big Milly's a backpackers' hostel on the beach, so we went. It was an alternative universe where Westerners come to see Africa and hang out with the locals. It was a very confusing place for me since everything seemed so fake. I didn't really know how to process it and Katherine and I pretty much used the hostel as an information hub. We did walk along the beach which was very pretty and I found cowrie shells washed up along the beach which was cool since they were huge.

From the beach we found another car to take us to the monkey sanctuary which came highly recommended. This was a terrible decision as the car couldn't seem to find a road that could take us there and once we finally arrived a Rastafarian man was the park "ranger" and tour guide. This had bad idea written all over especially when we saw a river full of naked Ghanaian men bathing, but we continued on under the illusion that things would improve. After a while in the jungle without seeing monkeys we asked to be taken back to the main road where we breathed a sigh or relief and took the next car back to the taxi stand on the side of the road and then the next trotro back to Accra. It was a harrowing adventure to say the least and definitely satisfied any curiosity or desire to explore the less finer things Ghana has to offer. We rewarded ourselves with another round of Chinese food while watching the South Africa - Mexico game.

We also made our last trip to the mall and saw The Green Zone with Matt Damon which was good. And now that we finally have water back I'm going to go shower and wipe all of the ocean water and juggle of me.