Another whole week since I've blogged to you all. No, I have not fallen off the face of the planet. I went on safari. Now - before you get all excited and ask me about all of the awesome animals I saw and amazingly quintessential African experience... let me tell you a little something.
It's mating season.
That means that all of the elephants in Mole National Park... are hiding in the middle of the forest. AND the park doesn't offer driven safaris (unless you bring your own 4x4 vehicle) so your only option is to do a walking safari.
So, needless to say, our animal viewing was kind of... lacking. I should also tell you that getting to Mole requires 17 hours of being on a bus. And the way that the schedules work for the two buses you have to take - it's more like 24-36 hours to get there.
We got up at 4:30 AM on Friday in order to get to the bus station in Accra to catch the 7 AM bus. It took 13 hours to get to Tamale, which is the big city up north. We got into Tamale at 8:30 PM or so and had to stay overnight at the Catholic Guesthouse. I tried Guineafowl for dinner, which was pretty good. Oh! I also tried goat liver at one of the reststops for the bus. Also pretty delicious.
The next morning we had to wake up at 3:30 AM to check out of our rooms and get to the bus station for 4:30 AM to catch a 5:30 AM bus. We didn't have tickets for this bus, because we got in after the bus station ticket window had closed... But the bus was full/there were a million people mobbing the bus conductor. We met up with a couple other groups of Oboronis who were also going to Mole and after an hour of complete confusion and disarray and relocating - we ended up chartering a minibus/really nice tro-tro to Mole with our newfound Oboroni friends.
We got to Mole by 9:30 AM, or something equally ridiculous. And, as we all know I don't function best under the conditions of getting up before 5 AM two days in a row... we promptly checked in and took a nap. We woke up in time to get lunch and do an afternoon walking safari. Now, as I put in the earlier disclaimer, we didn't see much... But I did get a large number of bug bites! yayyyyy
What was cool, though, was that we had baboons and warthogs hanging out all around our hotel. Of course, I got really excited about this and our first night there I walked up to a mama warthog and her babies and said in my talking-to-animals voice (eg. if you've ever seen me talk to Sophie) "Hiiii! Aren't you cute?"
Well, who knew that she would take it as a challenge to her authority and she would make loud scary noises and come towards me like she was going to charge???
I certainly didn't.
But now I do. Note to self: Do not look wild animals in the eyes.
The morning safari the next day was (if it's even possible) less exciting that the previous afternoon's. And the hotel is supposed to give us a complimentary breakfast, but refused to feed us before the THREE HOUR safari. Meaning my stomach rumblings probably scared all of the animals away. After seeing a few kob (basically African deer) and a waterbuck, we got to go back and eat.
We spent the afternoon exploring Larabunga - a nearby town that has this really, really old mosque. The mosque itself was cool but Larabunga was nothing to get excited about. Check out a picture: (http://www.fecalface.com/POTD/upload/2007/03/post_203/700old_mosque.jpg)
So at this point, we were just preparing to leave to go back to Accra... This involved getting up at 3:30 AM. Again. (HONESTLY, I've never had to get up so early, so many times in a row in my LIFE.) Then a four hour bus ride to Tamale, a 3 hour stopover, and another 13 hours back to Accra. My butt hurts so much from sitting in those uncomfortable seats for such long periods of time...
On the bright side - I did try grasscutter while hanging out in Tamale! Grasscutter, for all of you who haven't seen the Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations episode on Ghana, is essentially a giant rodent. It looks like a cross between a big rat and a gopher. They eat it semi-regularly here (not as much as goat, of course!) and I have really wanted to try it. And now I did. It tastes a little off but is overall quite palatable. I believe that now makes my weird food list:
zebra, crocodile, goat liver, grasscutter, frog's legs... Am I missing something? Surely I have to be. I thought I ate way more gross stuff than that!
So now I'm back in Accra and studying for my final in Gender Issues in Religion and Culture, which is on Thursday. Booooo for actually having finals and not just lazing around all day. Oh well, serves me right for not really having any work all semester.
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