Boat trip on Volta Lake

Volta Lake - you might have heard about it in Geography classes back in the days, but just so you know it is the second largest artificial lake in the world - after the one in China. Not that this would help when it comes to providing the country with energy.

Now the story. In an early Sunday morning we all - Dalia, her Lithuanian guests, Misha and myself - headed to the trotro/bus station to find our ride to Akosombo - that's the name of the dam. And so we did - a bus, not a trotro - which made us wait for a while for it to get filled. Since I was kinda bored in the process and not comfortable enough to catch some sleep, I bought one of those games most of us had when we were kids - tetris and some other 99999 "fun"games - from the guy's head you see in the picture - quite impressive variety of stuff, wouldn't you say so? :)

I was entertained for about... 30 minutes, then Dalia got entertained for a while and in a few days after I'm getting really tired of it (I will have fun when there's no light....yupiii) I will give it to one of my neighbors - Hugh, a 9 year old bright little guy. Very noble of me, huh?

We had to change transportation in one small and cute little village with a really nice big bridge - forgot the name of it - and we got a trotro which was going to our destination - that's cause it was filled with "The Band" on board - a good moment for me to show off my impressive knowledge of twi. :) The Band sang the whole 5 hours of the boat ride and people danced and danced and danced. Yeah, Ghanaians like to dance and they're not shy about it. I like that.

The boat ride wasn't spectacular for me (I'm referring mostly to the landscape we've seen which was just water and some islands - talking from a landscape point of view the boat ride I took while in Greece was much better), but it was relaxing and fun, although a bit too touristy for my taste. It actually reminded me of the boat ride I took back home in Romania from Tulcea to Sf. Gheorghe (a small village in The Danube Delta) on the big and slow boat - but I have to admit this was much nicer. We had food and one drink included and the service and entertainment was really good. All for about 16 dollars.

Oh...and we stopped at an island, 27 km from the shore where people live - main occupation - fishing - some will say bagging cause that's what they do the two days a week the boat stops on their island, but the rest of 5 they fish. :-) It is true they also dance and sing and have canoes for short rides, but as you set foot on that ground many kids start grabbing your hand and ask for money. We didn't like that last one activity. We appreciate when they provide a service or something for some money and NOT BEG. And apparently there was no school on the island so they had to go with the canoes on a neighboring island for education where is also a training camp for military force...or that's what I've heard between big hungry bites of chicken (we've got all these infos after we came back on the boat, in case you were wondering).

Now, how can I forget the beads?!?! See pictures for enlightment. I loooove, or better say I'm addicted to the local bracelets, necklaces and earrings - so original and colorful. They were selling those before getting on the boat. Not enough money to satisfy my huge urge of shopping, though.

Oh wow...look at me...I've written quite a lot this time. Not bad! :)