Elephant safari in North Ghana

Already my second weekend in Ghana! Got to spend it with the other trainees in Ghana cause we all went to Mole - a big natural reservation up north where one can see elephants. The reservation is huge and there are also lions, baboons, buffalos – around 34 species of mammals and around 10 of reptiles, plus a lot of birds. We only got to see the elephants, the antelopes and some of our groups have also seen baboons.

Ahhhh, the road till there was mostly bumpy and also crowded. They overload their big trucks and therefore a lot of accidents happen. Oh, I haven't told you how (most of) the Ghanaians drive. It’s bad. :-)
So it took us a lot of extra time to get to our destination. But we've made it safe and sound and really tired.

In the morning we woke up early to go chase the elephants. We joined another group of young people (one Australian girl, a Scottish girl, an English girl and one German guy) and went to find the antelopes and the elephants and disturb their natural habitat :-)

There was a friendly elephant shortly after we’ve began our quest so everyone took many pictures. Then for the next two hot hours we’ve seen the antelopes and looked for other big guys - but no sight of them. I was almost to declare myself unsatisfied by the whole experience when here they were – close to the hostel where we slept in – a mom and a dad elephant together with a teenager elephant – we figured that out cause he was the one smoking and talking bad slang to his parents. :-)

Happy with the amount of picks, we headed to our next destination – Larabanga mosque. The people of that village all live in mud houses, but they have this mosque to use for tourists/ money purposes. So they charged us for lots of things - the community, for the chief, for the guide etc. Also the kids and teenagers tried to make us give them more money inventing stories bout a football team and no ball (another girl that was there last year heard the same story). We felt a little bit harassed, but we still gave them some extra money – they needed them more than we did and they did not know better.

We next saw the waterfalls (forgot the name – will get back on that) – a small one and a big one. It was beautiful. I enjoyed watching the people fooling around in the water and posing for pictures.

All in all it was a really great experience, even the uncomfortable ness along the way. So YUHOOO for Ghana and AIESEC trainees! :-)