Mole National Park-Sept.21-23

On Friday Lise and I took the afternoon bus to Mole National Park, a wild game park about 140km from Tamale. True to Ghanaian time standards, our bus was set to leave at 1:30pm but we did not find ourselves on the road until 3pm. During our time at the bus station we had an opportunity to watch other local buses loading and my stomach began to do flip flops. One bus in particular seemed to be full to the absolute brim…people were standing in the aisles, sitting three or four to one bench and yet somehow people were still getting on. By the time this bus left people had even packed into both entrance ways to the point that an attendant had to coax the doors shut from the outside. Considering my claustrophobia & tendency for motion sickness, I was having trouble visualizing how I could possibly travel 3-4 hours packed in like a sardine, flying over Ghana’s awful dirt roads. Our bus finally arrived and Lise and I took our designated seats…this wasn’t so bad, we each had a seat to ourselves & obviously the numbered tickets would allow for some level of organization…right?? Wrong! Once all the seats were filled up a third seat pulled down from the left side of the aisle, allowing a 5th person to sit in the aisle. Then as people continued to flow onto the bus, they were instructed to sit on each side of these portable seats, resulting in 6-7 people seated in each aisle. No opportunity to get up and stretch on this trip!
Slightly after 6:30pm when the savannah had been draped in darkness our headlights on the bus went out. Several of the men on the bus attempted to fix it on 2 separate occasions, but to no avail. So we sailed ahead blinking the hazard lights and honking our horn. We arrived in Mole National Park at 9pm that evening, following a motorcycle the last link of the trip to ensure we made it into the park gates. This all made a grey hound excursion seem so cushy and extravagant!! ; )
On Saturday morning we joined the 6:30 am walking safari with a number of other expats. Within a few minutes of the hike we stumbled across a herd of Kob grazing in the grass. The male looked like a deer with short, black, twisted horns instead of antlers. They were a beautiful reddish-brown colour and they moved very gracefully, like a gazelle. Next we came across some mischievous baboons that were running up and down the roof of a village compound and swinging down on the power poles. It’s so funny how human-like their actions are when you watch them, they looked like bad kids.
As we proceeded through some thicker bush we came across a group of warthogs…”Pumba! Is that you?” haha Unfortunately, they are not afraid of people and later showed up in front of our hotel room munching the grass outside (they seem a bit more intimidating than the lizards that I’ve become used to outside my door). After the warthogs we found a little monkey picking some fruit and just beyond his tree our guide spotted the elephants. We were able to track them down and were rewarded with a close up view of two elephants wrestling with their trunks. As we followed them, we were led to a group of about 8 elephants on their way to the watering hole. It was quite amazing to see these huge animals in their own environment; they seemed so peaceful & majestic.
We joined the 3:30pm safari as well, mostly just for the walk because we knew that most animals are much easier to find in the early mornings. Our guide seemed a little annoyed that a group had actually shown up for the afternoon; it was blazing hot so perhaps he figured this would keep the expats away. None the less we set out, but I have a suspicion that he had a smirk on his face as he led us deeper into the savannah. In a nutshell, what we trekked through has led both Lise and I to believe that we are completely capable of making it on “Survivor”. The rainy season had left large sections of our “trail” underwater and our guide, who was wearing rubber boots, didn’t even flinch as he led us on. All of the other girls had shown up in sandals so they had been given rubber boots to borrow, but Lise and I were just in our sneakers. At times we were knee deep in murky water and bush and the more I tried not to think about snakes and all the gross invisible things that may be making their way through my pores, the quicker my footsteps became. Two hours later as the sun was beginning to set we made it back to the hotel and couldn’t help but laugh at the awful mess we’d become. Cheers to a successful safari!!