The festive season

Happy New Year ! ! (Sorry it’s so late)

I had a fantastic holiday with Tim over Christmas and New Year. Christmas was very different this year as you can imagine. My first hot Christmas. It was amazing that Santa still managed to find us in Ghana and we had lots of presents to open on Christmas morning. We sat in bed and opened our pressies before taking a trip up Mount Gemi, where we could experience a 360^o view of the whole of the Volta. We met up with some other volunteers who were travelling around the Volta Region for a ‘Christmas Lunch,’ before phoning home to wish our families a Merry Christmas.

We visited all the places mentioned in my last blog and more. Some of my favourites were, the Wli waterfalls, a trip to the Atome monkey sanctuary and a stunning boat ride on the Volta itself. The walk to the waterfalls took around 45 mins, we were accompanied by a guide who was on his Christmas break from school. He was very knowledgeable about the falls and the surrounding area. Along the path we saw hundreds of different species of butterflies which unfortunately wouldn’t keep still long enough for us to take any photos.

The monkey sanctuary was set in  beautiful rainforest, our guide took us along a short path to go in search of the monkeys and this is where I encountered my first Ghanaian snake. We continued along the path while the guide made calling sounds to alert the monkeys we had food. It took a short while for the monkeys to respond but eventually they came bounding through the tree tops to greet us. Armed with bananas we waited for the monkeys to come close and sit on my shoulder to take the banana out of my hand.

The boat trip on the Volta was spectacular, we were taken around the lake in a huge canoe shaped boat and shown the magnificent scenery of the mountains and inlets along the way. We stopped at a few beaches to pick up some travellers and to drop off some stowaways before stopping to learn about and sample some local rum distilled on one of the small islands. It was very tasty although very strong, I hasten to add we didn’t purchase any stored only in second hand water bottles ! !

We moved down to the beach for New Year, where we visited Elmina castle and learnt about the slave trade along the coast over 200 years ago. We then  spent a few days taking a well deserved rest sunbathing on a beautiful sandy beach, swimming in the sea and reading our books. We returned to Accra where I had to say adios to Tim at the airport  and spent my last few days catching up with some shopping and attended a meeting with VSO.

A two day journey of taxi’s, buses and tro’s followed with an overnight in Kumasi before I finally hit home for a good night’s sleep in my ‘own’ bed ! !