First night under a mosquito net

Marantha Estuary Beach camp. We were staying at the place where the Volta River empties into the ocean.





The sun was setting as we were leaving...breathtaking!
Bottoom picture: Tiolet anybody? The latrines were...well a bit rustic... I won't go into detail.


I had quite the adventure this weekend. I Went to an area called Ada with a bunch of girls and stayed in thatch roof huts on the beach. We took public transport an hour and half to the sleepy little town of Ada, we left in the evening so by the time we arrived it was pitch black. A couple of local guys who owned the place we were staying were waiting to meet us. We unfolded from the Trotro (local taxi vans) and followed these guys for about 10 minutes through dusty, windy streets down to the river’s edge where they loaded us up in a boat and motored us downriver about 15 minutes to the huts that were to be our accommodation for the night. It was so beautiful!! I felt like it was something out of a movie. The sky was clear with just a few silhouetted billowy clouds against the dark blue of the night sky, it was more stars than I have seen my entire time in Ghana. The port area is so polluted that I can usually only see about 5 stars most nights. The moon was reflecting off the water and the only sound interrupting the stillness of the night was the one motor propelling the boat down river. When we arrived to the shore where the huts were, everything was dark, the local guys brought us lanterns and showed us to our huts. The ocean was just out of view from where we were staying but we could hear the continual roar of the ocean as the waves crashed against the shore. There were 7 of us that went and it was 2 to a hut so one person had to sleep by themselves. I volunteered to have a hut to myself because I was looking forward to a long nights sleep. My only companion was an orange googly-eyed crab that I spotted climbing up the inside wall of the hut just I as I was getting ready to hang my mosquito net. I was going to leave him be until I noticed he was making very good progress up the wall and I didn't want him discover a way to launch himself across the narrow gap between my bed and the wall. I don't know if crabs can really launch themselves but if anything can I am sure a hardy African crab could manage. I wasn’t keen on the idea of waking up to find him scuttling across my face in the middle of the night so out he went. I prefer the company of a crab to the company of a rat any day though. Unfortunately, hut number 5, where some of our girls were staying, was inhabited by a friendly little rat. Needless to say the sight of it running circles around the top ledge of the hut kept the girls from a restful nights sleep.

We spent the next day relaxing in hammocks under the palm trees, enjoying the breeze off the ocean. It kinda looked like the location for one of those survival reality TV shows, I had to ask myself is this really my life? What 23 year old gets to live on a ship off the coast of Ghana, experience driving in a third world country (that’s a story for another time), be directly involved in the AIDS crisis of Africa and enjoy a relaxing night stay in a thatch roof hut? … It was a wonderfully restful weekend. The beauty of nature always refreshes my soul…