I went traveling this weekend with 3 of my friends, Kelsey, Annie and Chelsea. We woke up bright and early Friday morning to begin our journey to the Green Turtle Lodge, an Eco-Lodge Beach resort, located near the village Akwidaa in the Western Region. After a taxi ride, and two tro tro rides, we got to the main junction where we had to take yet another tro tro. Little did we know how far down this unpaved, VERY bumpy, dirt road the beach resort was. It was about an hour long ride of bouncing up and down, crammed in this tro tro full of people with the lovely smell of fish (NOT!), as one woman carried a huge bucket of fish with her to her village. This was by far the ickiest tro tro ive ever ridden in! But…once we arrived, it was all worth it…this place was paradise! It was completely secluded and there was zero cell phone service. We got the cheapest possible rooms, which were the “dorms”…a bunch of beds in a room together, got our swim suits on, and went down to the beach! This was probably the most beautiful beach I have seen yet. We still had several hours left of sunshine, so we tanned and played in the ocean. At night, we played some games outside near the bar and then went to sleep pretty early. We were planning to go visit the village on stilts, Nzulezu, near Beyin the next day. On Saturday we got up, ate a really yummy breakfast of French toast with plantains and honey, and then tanned and swam some more at the beach.
Kelsey and I really wanted to go visit the village on stilts, however our other two friends decided they didn’t want to go through the fuss of all the traveling to get there since it was about another 3 hours of traveling towards the west. Kels and I decided it was something that we really wanted to see, so we spent a few hours out on the beach and then left the Green Turtle Lodge to head to Beyin. Our plan was once we arrived we would take a canoe out to the village and stay Saturday night there. After 3 taxis and a tro tro, we arrived in this very small and at the moment, quiet, village of Beyin. A young man who was in the shared taxi with us helped us find the office for the Ghana wildlife department, where we were supposed to set up the canoe trip out to the village on stilts. When we got to the office, it was closed (Of course!), so we went in to town and this young man said he would help us find the people who run it. We had no idea that we arrived to town on the final day of a weeklong festival, which explained why the village was so quiet…everyone was down by the beach watching all the festivities. We were able to stand by and watch some of the festival, which was really exciting and unexpected! Eventually we found the people who run this canoe trip to Nzulezu, sitting inside a little bar chatting away. They were very welcoming towards us, offering us anything to drink and to sit down and relax. They said they could not take us out to the village today since it was too late. Although their reasoning was “safety”, I believe they just wanted to sit around, drink and celebrate the festival! We arranged for one person to take us at 5am Sunday morning so we could get out of town early to head back to Accra. Our next obstacle was finding somewhere affordable to stay just for the night. They asked if we wanted to do a “homestay” which was our cheapest option, so we opted for this. The man who owned the bar also had a couple of little cottages raised up on stilts, out on the beach. We payed 15 cedis for a room for the night. When he showed it to us, it looked fine, not awful atleast…however later on that night we would really find out what it was like! Anyway, we went to this nice looking restaurant we had seen earlier out near the lake to get dinner. It was the cleanest, most sanitary looking place we could find in the village. A Spanish couple and their son owned/ worked it. The son couldn’t speak English very well so I was able to practice my Spanish with him! We ordered a hamburger and French fries, which turned out to be the BEST hamburger we have had here and very affordable (6 cedis). We hung out here for several hours and then headed out to the cottage on the beach. Steven (the owner) had given us a lantern to use as there wasn’t much lighting in this village and there was no electricity in the cottage. Luckily my cell phone also has a flashlight on it, however this wasn’t enough. Kelsey and I were terrified as we walked through the pitch-black darkness of the trees and grass that lined the beach. By this time I think we were basically doing every single thing our mothers had ever told us not to do (sorry mom!!). We eventually made it to the sand and then to our room safely! Of course this little wooden door could not be locked from the inside, and we were so scared being all by ourselves, so we took the large wooden table in our room and moved it in front of the door. As I shined my phone light on the bed, which had looked perfectly fine earlier, I saw a couple of little cockroaches and then little remains of some type of animal that had decided to do its business on our sheets. I was so disgusted and asked Kelsey, “what did that?!” She said maybe rats or lizards. UGH, I cant even begin to explain how grossed out I was! We cleaned it all off, tucked in the mosquito net and tried to fall asleep. Just as we both were about to fall asleep, someone knocked on our door. I shook Kelsey to wake up and we both panicked. This man tells us he is Thomas and that he was looking for us earlier to take us to Nzulezu. We told him please go away and tried not to talk to him. Anyway, it ended up being that he lived in the room right next to us and was Steven’s younger brother. It would have been nice if Steven had let us in on this tiny piece of information…would’ve saved us a lot of feelings of anxiety and stress! As Thomas laid in the room next to us, he kept talking to us. He told us he is a Rasta man and that we should come out and see his face to know everything is fine. We said NO! We will see you tomorrow. He ended up going to sleep and so did we…well sort of. I wouldn’t exactly say I got much sleep that night since the waves were so loud, I was terrified of cockroaches and whatever animals were in that room, and nervous about having any other unexpected visitors knock on our door.
Just as we had asked, the people who said they would take us to Nzulezu at 5 am were up and ready by 445am!! We packed up our stuff real quick and headed out. It was still totally dark out at this hour but they knew their way. It turned out that Thomas was going to be our tour guide to the village and he ended up being the sweetest guy, wouldn’t even harm a fly! We hopped in to the canoe and headed out for our 45 minute canoe ride toward the village on stilts. At first it was very dark, but the sun started to rise very quickly and I cant even describe how beautiful of a sight this was canoeing through the wetlands in pure silence, only hearing the sound of the water and birds. The village on stilts was such a magnificent sight! This village is over 500 years old and is situated on the middle of Lake Amansuri. It is built entirely on stilts and as Thomas told us, each member of the family usually has their own canoe. As we got closer to the village, we saw several women paddling towards us to go in to town (Beyin) where he said they would sell fufu and banku. Children also need their own canoes as they would have to paddle to school every day once they were out of primary school. There were some school rooms in the village, but they only went up to a certain level. It was quite a sight seeing a young boy who looked like he couldn’t have been older than 6 or 7 years old, just standing in a huge canoe paddling it by himself. You can imagine how nervous I was when we were walking around this village and babies and young children were running and playing along the walkways, which don’t have any baby guards to protect them from falling in to the water! As I looked around at this village, completely awe struck, I wondered, How do these people possibly survive like this? But they have for hundreds of years and they will continue to do so. It was such a beautiful, amazing sight to see the way these people go about living their everyday lives! When we returned back to town, we got a shared taxi right away to head to the main junction to catch a tro tro. The way shared taxis work here is they cram as many people in to the car as possible and you pay much less than you would in a private chartered taxi. In total, 11 people squeezed in to this tiny taxi meant for 5 people total. There was 4 adults in the back, 2 children on their laps, 2 people in the front seat, and the driver and a young lady sitting in his seat next to him with a baby on her lap. The taxi driver literally drove with his left arm around this ladies shoulder and his right arm on the steering wheel and stick. It was the most ridiculous sight, I wish I could have taken a picture. We made it back to Accra in hardly no time at all!
(my last video wouldnt upload as a whole so i split it in to two videos below.)
