Day 11: Trip to the Volta Region!

It was Saturday morning and everyone was excited about our trip to the Volta region today. We all filed into the van by 7 am to start our 3 hour journey north of Accra to the man made lake - Volta. This region also had the highest waterfall in West Africa!

 The traffic was really bad until we left the city. This city has just too many round abouts - which can take up to half an hour to take a 'U' turn. There are loads of street sellers at traffic signals and it's a common sight to see them run along with vehicles to collect their cash from a sale. You'll even see kids as little as 6 or 7 yrs carrying heavy buckets on their head dripping with sweat. These sights remind me that that I haven't really 'experienced' the real Africa from the safety of my AC van with access to refreshments whenever I want. It's a constant struggle for survival - like I'd mentioned before - everyone is a hussler.

As we left the city, the roads turn into rugged reddish terrain and the ride became more bumpy. It was an interesting drive through the countryside where we came across a wild baboon fleeting across the road, several mango sellers - all kinds of mangoes neatly piled up into pyramids, ant hills taller than me, blue blue skies sprinkled with heavy clouds - lovely! , banana-coconut- mango trees - if not for the people I could easily believe that I was passing through villages in Kerala.

We stopped at Volta hotel on the way and caught two young boys on a snake boat as the subject of our photos. The next two villages we passed by were called Juapong (means: big market) & Apegusu - which means big market. The villages along this area are all fishing and farming communities. As we came closer to the Volta region the landscape became hilly and the road was flanked by mountains on either side.

By 11 we got to the Tafi Atome Monkey sanctuary - a home to thousands of mona monkeys. History: The people of this village migrated from the central region. They had brought with them a sacred idol which they worshiped. Once they settled on Tafi Atome, they began to consider the mona monkeys sacred and representatives for convesring with the idol. For long, these monkeys lived alongside the locals and they were often fed in their homes as they were very friendly and well behaved. People protected the monkeys as they were considered sacred. But with colonialism, several forests were cut down for farming which killed a lot if these monkeys. A Canadian chap (I forget his name) came down and did a research in these forests to find that the mona monkeys had become endangered and they need to be protected. With consent from the locals, they turned the forest into a monkey sanctuary to protect the mona monkeys. These monkeys breed 1 baby at a time with a gestration period of 6 months and live upto 15 yrs. (hehe, yeah too much of detail aye?) :D

We followed the guide (who held loads of bananas for them) while he made weird sounds to call the monkeys. Soon enough, an entire group of them just appeared among the trees. These monkeys were super friendly. First we started with just having the monkey eat the bananas out of our hands while hanging from trees, but soon they jumped on our arms to eat them. For me who knew little about monkeys, it was surprising that they had no claws - but just rubbery very agile paws. The guide told us that the leader of the monkey group that we met was called Commando(:D), but we didn't get to see him.

Wli Waterfalls: After the monkey experience, it was a 1 hour drive to the Wli - the village with the tallest waterfall in West Africa called the 'Wli Agumatsu' waterfall. It was a 45 min walk up to the water which added to the fun. The waterfall was picture perfect with a nice little rainbow right in front of it. I'd never been under such a high waterfall before - so this was super exciting. The water was only waist high so we waded through it to get to under the falling water. & What was mindblowing was that we walked 'through' the rainbow to get to the waterfall!! That part of the mountain was also home to thousands of bats. Around 4pm, when the sun fell on this side of the mountain - thousands of them started flying around. It was the most beautiful sight! *When left alone, nature is so breathtaking* 

Rhapsody Club: I got back to the apartment at 10ish and headed out to Rhapsody - a club at Accra mall. Danced painfully to some weird African music - I missed familiar fast moving songs. Got back home at 1:45 am & crashed!