Volta Region

I have a few hours before I head out again on another trip so I thought I would quickly post a short description of my weekend trip to the Volta Region.

On Friday, myself, Molly, Catherine and her dad who flew in to visit for the week, left Accra and by nightfall we had arrived at Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary. We spent the night there and in the morning we fed the monkeys and went for a stroll through the forest. I fed a monkey a banana and it was pretty awesome. The little thing jumped onto my arm and shredded the banana peel off with it’s tiny fingers. To be honest this was my second attempt… On my first try the monkey ripped the banana out of my hand and ran off, jumping into a tree to eat it. That was no fun for me so the second time, I held tightly so the monkey would have to stay if it wanted to eat.

After breakfast we moved on to Wli Falls, the tallest waterfall in West Africa. The falls are in two segments, the upper falls and the lower falls. It’s a quick and flat 40 minute hike to the lower falls but the upper falls were a steep and fairly strenuous 2 hour climb. I wore flip flops which was a horrible idea but nevertheless I made it and the completely deserted upper falls were definitely worth the hike.

View half way up the climb

Cliff face near the falls

Wli - Upper falls

... for a sense of scale

Wli - Lower falls. See all the bats on the cliff face?

Ok. you see them for sure now.

Wli - Lower falls

On the way back this morning I came across a tro-tro mate (guy who yells the destination and collects money) wearing a very unlikely shirt:

Please, somebody calculate the chances of that… I was curious where and how he came across the shirt but its true origin will remain a mystery since he told me that he bought the shirt from someone in Accra. 

Despite everything, the craziest experience for me this weekend was realizing that 3 weeks from today I'll be back in Ohio... times flies.