Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Hot Tamale!!

Tamale is HOT! Up in the northern region of Ghana just a few degrees away from the equator, Tamale sits close to Ghana's boarder with Burkina Faso. (Which I saw briefly, from a distance...) The north is super interesting though, and I did not feel like I had quite enough time to see it all. It seems like there is a lot more culture up there. Just a lot more diversity than in the rest of the country. In contrast to the rest of Ghana, mostly Christian, the north is super Muslim. Which made the architecture and the people really interesting to look at. The majority of women were wearing all sorts of layers of beautiful cloth and scarfs. Also it is funny to see so many traditionally dressed people riding around on motorcycles, which are all over the north. Also while walking one must be constantly aware of the bicycles that are all over the place, or you will surely be pulverized.

We spent one day at Mole National Park. In my opinion it was a little over rated. We went up one afternoon, and stayed the night at the park. They did have an pool there, which overlooked a giant valley which was beautiful. The pool was soooo great, and felt so amazing, especially considering the heat. We stayed in the pool that majority of the evening. The next morning we woke up early to go on the safari. We pretty much walked through the bush for the 2 hours that we had the guide looking for elephants. I had to borrow these huge rubber boots, because like a fool I only brought my open sided keen hiking shoes and was not allowed to wear them. Therefore, I had to shuffle my way though the bush, and got huge blisters on my heals from the damn boots. But alas, right before our two hours were up, when we had all just about had given up on any hope, we did come across an elephant. He was cute. I am glad that I saw him :)

Another day we went to Paga, to check out the crocodile ponds. We got to sit on them and feed them chickens. They actually felt different then I expected them too. A lot more life like and less solid then I thought they would be... go figure. It was a little bit of a disappointment though, because we had a crazy ass tour guide that day, who was pretty much set on leaving basically the second after we got there. The whole group was annoyed that we had just spent 3 and a half hours on a bus to turn around before we felt like we had seen the sights. Oh well... the crocodile was cool!

Another really exciting thing that happened while we were up in Tamale was that Ghana won the Under 20 World Cup, against Brazil!!! (Soccer, aka football for the rest of the world). It was a huge win!! And all of Ghana was celebrating. I was watching the game inside the hotel, when they won, the streets went wild. There were horns blowing, people yelling, people dancing in the streets, excitement everywhere. Small parades were forming as people went running down the street sing and banging on anything that made noise. And what was even better then all of this, was how excited people got that we (white people) were excited for them. They loved that we were cheering and happy for Ghana! It was fantastic! The party lasted for HOURS! Honestly I don't know how late it went, it was still in full blow when I finally fell asleep that night. It was craziness.

<3 <3 <3

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