Life's a Happy Song: Shai Hills

This Sunday I went to Shai Hills Nature Reserve! It is the land which was historically inhabited by the Shai people, but is now kind of like a state park. There are different trails you can go on and the one we chose took us to the top of the highest hill. They really aren't hills, but they're smaller than what we normally see as mountains. They're kind of in the middle! I went with a few other international students from my same program and about 6 other students from Europe. Most of them were German, two Swedes and one Swiss. We started our walk to the hill and saw a whole family of baboons!!! They got pretty close to us and one even took a banana that someone threw on the ground for them! It was soo cool! There was even a tiny baby that still sort of looked like an alien! Well anyways, we saw some baboons and some ostriches on the other side of the path, but they were in a fenced in area. We ended up walking for 7 km before we reached the base of the mountain/hill! We were a little tired but pushed on and hiked up to the top. The view from the top is INCREDIBLE!!!!! The whole time we were walking we were just surrounded by tall grass and a few trees. Well from the top, that was all you could see all around for miles and miles. Up to the horizon, it was just land and land and land with nothing else on it. It was amazing! I was so in awe of it! We stayed at the top for half an hour I think just admiring it. It was very reminiscent of Lion King!!

The ride back was kind of crazy. Of course things here always have to end with an adventure! By the time we left it was already getting dark and no trotros would stop!! We waved them all down but no luck! Someone in our group went closer into the village and found a driver who promised he would come pick us up, but only if we paid almost double the normal fare. By this time it was completely dark so we were desperate to get going. The driver took us into the a station where we would be able to get another trotro back to campus, but by the time we were pulling into the village it was FULL of people! We were stopped at a light when suddenly some people came up to our trotro and reached in through the window to try to snatch our bags, ipods, phones, whatever they could get! Even when we shut our windows, they would open them from the outside and reach in!! It was so scary!!! That happened about 5 times and the worst part is traffic was stopped so we couldn't even move! Thankfully no one got anything stolen, but we got to the station right after that happened. We were all weary of walking around in the station trying to find our next trotro so thankfully our driver found someone who took us back to Legon. We had to pay way more than normal, but at that point we just needed to get back! And we did, safe and sound! It was a nice day, and the adventure at the end made it all the more Ghanaian!

Pictures!!!