"Oh...on our way down there was a big cobra in our path"

The first thing i have to mention.....my dreaded image of people seeing a video of me dancing came much sooner than I ever expected- I was hoping I would no longer be in this country when it surfaced! It was on the 7 o'clock news the other night!!!! I walked into my hostel, and the lady at the front desk yelled, "Amanda, I saw you dancing on TV!!!!" Shortly after, a bunch of Ghanaian guys came up to me and said, "you like like a movie star in Ghana!"...needless to say, I was mortified.

Other than that, everything is going well here in Ghana. We traveled again this weekend- yet another amazing experience! Each trip somehow always seems better than the last. Jesse and I took a long journey through the Eastern region to meet up with our friend April in a quaint village called Amedzofe (which is atop a beautiful Mountain surrounded by lush rain forest!).

On our way, we had the opportunity to cross lake Volta into a village that hardly ever sees Obrunis. It had such a wonderfully different feel to it...it was almost like the people had not experienced enough tourism to develop the idea that all tourist are rich- people were so kind, genuine, and honest. We passed through this wonderful place on the lake to our first destination....Donkrokrom.

A few notes on our journey to Donkrokrom (i don't have time to paint you all picture of how interesting and funny our travels were, so a glimpse will have to do!)......

First, we left Legon at 6am to go to Accra to catch a tro-tro...we waited for 3 hours before our tro-to left. After our departure, as i was drifting into a light sleep and I heard Jesse laughing and telling me not to open my eyes..of course I did, and I realized that we were back in Legon! We could have saved ourselves 3 hours by leaving straight from Legon...

Next, after changing tro tros in Koforidua (where we were swarmed, and a taxi driver got in a fight with our tro-tro driver trying to make a few extra bucks on us), our tro tro started smoking as we slowly chugged up a mountain pass. All 40 of us got out and walked up this mountain! It was hot, but extremely beautiful.

Once we finally got to the top and on our way again, I watched our tro-tro fly 70 mph towards a truck going at least that fast towards us...I was sure we were going to die, but luckily the truck ONLY hit the side mirror! Although glass came flying into the windows, people were relatively unphased and we just kept driving. Before Jesse and could stop laughing, we were pulled over by the police. Apparently there have been a lot of armed robberies in that area lately, so they were just "checking us out."

We finally came to Adwaso...a one hut "village" on Lake Volta- from here we took a ferry across...when we got there, they wouldn't let our tro-tro through, so the driver simply took us on an off-roading detour!

When we finally arrived in Donkrokrom, it was dark and the whole village was outside watching an outdoor Ghanaian movie! Now let me say that this village is far from "developed." It was very strange...we met some strange people, but we made it safely to a guest house there.

The next morning we crossed another river by boat, and went to a village with lots of monkeys....we didn't stay there long- we then hiked up a huge mountain (through the rain forest) to Amedzofe with our friend April...and right before the three of us entered at the trail head April says, "oh yeah...on our way down there was a big Cobra in our path!" Jesse and I just looked at each other and started laughing. We made it up, and it was an amazing hike! Amedzofe is a beautiful place.

On Easter we hiked down the other side of the rain forest to a waterfall....i cannot even explain this experience!

Oh, one more thing- the scariest bugs i have seen yet in Africa happened to reside in our hotel room!

Well I am out of time, but I will blog again shortly...i am sure there is much more i want to say- just no time at the moment!