where to begin??

Hello everyone!!

It feels like forever since we last wrote. So much has happened on our journey through Ghana, both good and bad but mostly good!

We started in Northern Ghana in a wonderful little city called Wa, which was very laid back with tourists because I don't think they see a lot of them. One day we were walking down the road and this woman insisted that I hold her child. Unfortunately for him (and me) he was absolutely terrified of me. We are pretty sure he thought I was a white demon lady and screamed as if he was being tortured but his mom still insisted I hold him! Poor kid...

Then I went for a 3.5 hr run. Darl finished his run in 1.5hrs because he wasn't feeling well but I continued on my own. By the time I finished I thought I was going to die! I have never been chafed like that in my whole life! The humidity here is vicious so my clothes rubbed like crazy and I was left with 2nd degree burns! THEN, to top it off, I almost blacked out at the bus station from heat exhaustion! Good times. Luckily, we had a bunch of very helpful people take care of me until we got a cab back to an air conditioned hotel to recover.

We also visited a small village called Wechiau and went to a community run ecotourism project for protecting hippos. It was amazing!!! We slept on a rooftop and took a canoe ride to see a family of five hippos and learned lots from our wonderful tour guide about the local beliefs and uses of botanicals. Oh and our canoe almost tipped in the river with the hippos but we stayed afloat thanks to our guide jumping into the water to stabilize it!

Next we went to Mole National Park and stayed in a small village called Larabanga with no running water, bucket showers, and a rooftop to sleep. Darl attempted a run the first night we arrived towards the national park when he was attacked by giant angry baboons! We think they were driven by hormones and likely thought Darl was a female, slightly less hairy but just as smelly baboon to mate with. He barely escaped with a few scratches but has been traumatized ever since.

After Mole we were quite excited to enter civilization again in the city of Kumasi. Here we discovered some amazing porridge called Tom Brown and lots of other interesting foods like ato (mashed plantains or potatoes with spices, onion, palm oil and avocado), and dari (powder made from cassava root), fou fou (mashed inyam into a sticky paste served with ground nut soup), and kenkey (made with maize). Also I met an interesting mute fello doing a hill workout and joined him for 10 hill repeats. Him and I were laughing the whole time when we werent panting like dogs! But it was a good time! Kumasi is a great city for running because it is all on rolling hills. |We also got to visit an amazingly huge market, apparently one of the biggest in western Africa! And we saw the palace of the Ashanti king and learned about the history and current Ashanti influence in Ghana. My Ashanti name would be 'Aquia' because I was born on a Wednesday. We also learned about how certain Ghana city folk make fun of each other for eating Ghanian food and eating with their hands and get labeled "village" people. Very sad that even here people are losing their traditional values around food in the name of fast food and convenience foods.

4 days ago we discovered what we have been dying to find for a while. Paradise!!! Long, deserted beach with amazingly huge waves for surfing or boogy boarding, tasty seafood meals every night, and long, rolling hills in the rain forest for training runs. We even had a man jump out of the bush yesterday on our long run and offer us palm wine (their local moonshine). Dave Dame would be soo jealous! We also made friends with some ridiculous dudes one from Ireland and one from Holland who loved to drink.

We are going to stay in Busua for another week or so before heading to the Cape Coast to learn more about the slave trade in Ghana. But I don't want this part of the trip to ever end!

Miss you all and make sure you write us lots!!