On Safari

Wow what a weekend. I’ll start with the bad news first, for the last 24hours I have been projectile vomiting and it has not been pretty! Yesterday we travelled from 3.30am until 6pm on 2 very rickety busses. While waiting for the bus at the station, I began to feel dizzy and then started vomitting over the side of the pavement. I decided to still travel on the bus and continued to vomit out of the window several times. I felt sorry for the people sitting around me, as I emptied my stomach. I’m feeling a bit better now and am hoping it was just food poisoning.
Nevertheless I did have a brilliant weekend. We travelled to the Northern Region to Tamale which was a refreshing change. A predominately Muslim city with thousands of bicycles and another language made us feel like we’d changed countries instead of just regions. We stayed for a day in the city where we explored the leather market. We watched craftsmen making leather flip flops with car tyre soles. As I have large feet (size 8) I got a bespoke pair made, unfortunately the final stitches were made by a child. Which Zach enjoyed teasing me about after I had ranted the other day about child labour making his designer clothes.
After exploring the city we all piled onto a big orange bus to take us to Mole National Park (largest Safari park in Ghana). We luckily all managed to get seats on the 4hour bus journey which was packed with local farmers transporting their produce. When we arrived at the Park, we organized rooms and then enjoyed a nice dinner by the pool. The next morning we woke up early to go on Safari. We were accompanied by an armed ranger who took us further into the park where we saw warthogs, monkeys, antelopes and ELEPHANTS! The elephants were fantastic; we followed them through the forest as they knocked down trees and played with one another. It was amazing to be so close to wild animals in their natural habitat. After 2 hours walking we then returned to the hotel for breakfast and a swim in the pool looking over the savanna. As I was getting out from the pool, I heard a person shouting about an elephant. We all ran to see the commotion; it was a large elephant standing very close to the hotel. It was a little scary as there was no armed ranger present and we had been told earlier that if an elephant starts charging at you it will be difficult to escape.
In the afternoon Karem, Ifsa and I visited the Larabanga Mosque, the oldest Mosque in West Africa, it was a beautiful Western Sudanese designed mud structure. After a couple of hours looking around the village with our tour guides, we started to look for transport home. We initially looked for a taxi to take us back to the park however there was only one which was out of town. We then thought about waiting for the bus but it wasn’t due to arrive until 3hours later. So are choices were either bicycles or motorbikes. As it began to rain and we knew it was an uphill journey we decided to take the motorbikes. It was brilliant, Ifsa and I were a little scared as we jumped onto the large blue bike but it was brilliant. As are confidence grew we then started racing Karem until are engine broke and the bike swerved. Thankfully we were all safe and after 20mins pushing the bike the engine started and we were back on our way.