Volta Region

Last weekend CIEE took us to the Volta Region, which borders Togo. Rivky, Zahava, and I left on the Friday and the rest of the group joined us on Saturday. This trip was my favorite trip to far.

We came back from Israel right before and quickly cooked a little (without water) and brought lots of canned food. At 7:00 am on Friday morning our driver is ready to take us but there is no staff with us and no one knows who is supposed to accompany us (how typical). Thirty minutes later, we figure it all out and are on our merry way. We drive along some of the bumpiest roads I have ever been on. Trying to drink from our water bottle was joke. We made it to our first destination- a monkey sanctuary with minimal bumps on our heads. We entered the sanctuary with a guide who gave us bananas and we fed the monkeys. Zahava was the bravest and went first and fed them without any hesitation, then I had the guide help me feed at first, and Rivky barely fed them. The monkeys say in the trees and we had to extend the bananas to them holding the bottom of the fruit tightly as the monkeys peel the bananas. It was awesome to watch their little hands peel and gorge themselves with bananas.

Afterward, we continued to Ghana's tallest mountain- Afadjato. It's 2900 feet and we started at the base which is at 900 feet. It took about an hour to get up and a less to get down, but it's REALLY steep and Rivky and Zahava weren't feeling well so they turned back and I continued with our guide and our driver. When we got to the top, we were able to clearly see Togo and the surrounding mountain range, though I was no overly impressed with the view. It was nice, but not particularly amazing. The climb down was definitely tough on my knees. Also, keep in mind that we started the hike around 12:50 PM, so the sun was beating down making it over 90 degrees. I actually have never sweat so much in my life. My clothes were completely drenched; it was as if I had jumped into a pool. It was disgusting.

From there we continued to the "hotel" in Hohoe (pronounced Ho-hway). We wanted to stay in one room with a king size bed but they insisted that we had two rooms, which was annoying. We began to shower, but realized there was only one towel so we asked for another and they told us they only give one per room. So we had two towels for the three of us. Then, right before Shabbat, there was a huge storm and the electricity went out so we were planning on eating in the dark, but anyways in on of our rooms all of the light bulbs were out so that was not even such a problem. But eventually, the lights came back. In the morning, the phone rings to my room so I went to the front desk (which is like 10 feet away. Also they had called several times the night before and we just kept going to the front desk every time because it was Shabbat. I think they were pretty confused). Anyways, so I went to the desk and she told me I had to move to the other room and 3 people could be in the room after we had BEGGED to sleep together. This is so typical, whatever.

On Saturday Zahava and I walked through the town/village and saw all the hot spots of Hohoe, of which there were few. There was one shack playing some music...possible nightclub?

Then, on Sunday we went to Wli Falls, which was really cool. It's basically just really big waterfalls, which we swam in. It was really fun and refreshing. We hung out there for awhile and then headed back to the hotel, excited for our shower. We we arrived, they had taken our one towel. When we asked for a towel, the claimed there were none, but miraculously after much persuasion, the woman from the hotel found one clean towel for us. We showered and then loaded the bus to travel back to Accra.