Hm how to start this blog I really don’t know.

Sooo lets start with a little celebration. Earlier this week I talked to my old coach, Coach Basse, who four days ago became a dad for the first time. From hot and sunny Africa I want to send congratulations to Basse and his girlfriend Edita with their girl Sommer.

Lets get going with the business now.
I promised last time to write a blog about my new Hohoeian life but I feel like I have some unfinished business which needs to be dealt with before going to Hohoe.

As I mentioned in a single phrase in my last blog we took all the kids from the orphanage at Cape Coast on a field trip to a hotel where they had the chance of swimming in their pool.
The trip counts as one of my best experiences down here because it was so good to take the kids away from their everyday life at the orphanage and let them relax and swim at the pool which for the most kids are something they have only tried once or twice before.
With my travels set to begin on the Friday two and a half weeks ago we needed to take the kids Wednesday and Thursday same week so I could be there.
The first day we went was probably the most exciting since it was the youngest kids we brought the first time and seeing them run around with the greatest smiles on their mouths is a long lasting memory. In addition to seeing the enjoyment the kids had another great experience arise that day. Around the hotel there is a pond filled with crocodiles which you can see if you throw out bread to the fish which they eat. Besides from looking in the pond it is a possibility to walk on the shore around the pond and maybe be lucky to see some there.
And that’s how my wildlife week began.. Walking around on the shore we saw two crocodiles lying with approx ten meters of distance between each other looking like stuff animals. Stone cold the boys from the orphanage began walking close to the smallest crocodile trying to convince me that they wasn’t so dangerous. After taking my time to gather some courage I handed my camera to one of the boys and went closer to the crocodile. In was is one of the most exciting moments of my life I stood behind the crocodile and grabbed its tail and tried to look calm and cool on the picture.
Try and imagine how hard a time I had afterward to keep the boys away from doing the same.!

When the afternoon draw to a close I went together with another volunteer to Kakum National Park to sleep there for the night. As for a lot of the plans here everything went wrong. We had a hard time finding a ride to the place and once we got there and everything was complete dark we were told that we went the wrong place. Instead of sleeping in the trees in the middle of the rain forest we had to sleep in some kind of guesthouse.

Next morning we went on a guided nature walk through the rain forest before we were going to go on the canopy walk. The canopy walk is the only of its kind in Africa and is basically eight bridges connecting platforms on the trees forty meters above the ground. It was so beautiful to witness right after dawn where the fog was still above the trees.

Afterward Luke and I walked what seemed to be ten kilometers in the hot Ghanaian sun but what was only three.
We were going to the Monkey Forest, a place a dutch couple have used the last six years of building and now have filling up with neglected animals.
Seeing a lot of different animals and how a dutch couple moved to Ghana to take care of them was a nice experience. That I got to hold some different turtles and a snake did of course not make the experience worse.

The rest of the day went by with more kids to the pool and a farewell dinner with the rest of the originally Hills crew.
Next morning I was off to Accra to meet up with Nina for our travels to begin.

First stop to Kumasi to stay for the night at our well-used Methodist Guest House went fine. Early next morning we wanted to go to Tamale which is an eight hours drive before taking a new bus to Mole NP which is four more hours depending on the amount of breakdowns of the bus.
When we didn’t catch the first bus in Kumasi and generally got delayed on our way to Tamale the first response was that it is Ghana and you can’t expect things to go according to your plans and indeed we quickly realized that that would be the general consensus when our week was gone.

We stayed in Tamale for the night after trying to charter a taxi to take us on the four hour drive to Mole on what we later realized could possibly be the worst road in the entire world.

Already with our plans changed we went to Mole with a promise to our self not to rush anything and do whatever we feel like in the moment. Therefore we also ended up staying in Mole for four days and skip the rest of our plans.

Mole was certainly one of the nicest places I have ever been.

Time running out! Typical..

Will post the rest of the blog next week.

Thanks for the interest.

- Danny