Volta Region: Waterfall and Monkeys- June 27

 Tuesday June 27 

Today we went on a day trip. We woke up early and left in a van around 6 am to drive to the Volta region. It was about 3 hours and there was a lot of greenery and large hills and smaller towns. We saw lots of goats. 

Our first stop was the Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary. Apparently the land around this village has had Mona monkeys on it for over 200 years (Mona monkeys are primarily in West Africa) and the sanctuary was started to keep their land protected. Our guide said that they traditionally believe the monkeys are messengers of the gods so they’re sacred and not killed. On the land, the monkeys live in 13 families, some as big as 150 monkeys. Each one has a “grandpa” that is the biggest monkey and always eats first.

They don’t have a ton of tourists come through (this is really out of the way of any other tourist activities and in a small town) but when groups come, they get to walk in the land and feed some small bananas to the monkeys. 

We walked just a short ways in and we each got to hold out a banana and a monkey(s) would just into our arm and peel the banana and eat it. It was definitely true that the “grandpa” eats first, he was by far the largest and was hogging the bananas. When I held mine out, two monkeys both jumped on and tried to get the banana. 

One monkey had a baby holding onto her which was really cute. They all seemed curious about us and we got to watch them swinging around in branches. One monkey combed through another monkey’s hair, probably looking for insects to eat. 

We left and drove about an hour to our next location, the Wli wayerfall. We had a tour guide there too and it was about a 45 minute hike to the waterfall, going over a lot of short bridges that crossed the river from the waterfall. Togo was just on the other side of a small mountain/large hill and our guide even pointed out a trail that we could use to cross into Togo (one of my peers actually did go to Togo over the weekend and walked there). 

Before we got to the waterfall we went up a really steep and hard trail to see the upper falls which was pretty.

The waterfall was absolutely beautiful and we swum in it. We even went behind the waterfall which we all said felt like being waterboarded and it was hard to breathe. There were tons of bats high up on the cliff face. 

Our guide said that he wanted to learn how to swim better so I gave him some tips. 

On the walk back, our tour guide pointed out lots of plants including a mango tree, cassava plant, coffee bean tree, pineapple plants, and a cacao plant which we tried which was really good.

He also showed us honey insects that had a nest inside a hollow tree; you could hear them humming inside. We also saw a large waxy leaf that he says is starting to be used to wrap food instead of plastic.

We had jollof rice and chicken that we’d brought since there were not really restaurants anywhere around. 

We had a long drive back and there were several police checkpoints, one where we had to get out and show our passports and visa, I think because we were on the border to Togo and this is the one main road.

We did see lots of Trotros going towards Togo packed with luggage; I’m not sure if they were going to Togo or elsewhere. 

I see several signs for Presbyterian churches and seventh day Adventist churches. We also saw lots of soccer/football fields with simple goalposts, you can see a wood one here. 

Lots of the road was dirt road which was extremely bumpy; we did see one piece where workers were filling holes with dirt and some newly paved road which was smooth.

We passed lots of cars on the road which was sometimes scary because they’d pass really tightly with cars coming the opposite direction. 

We also saw several cars or trotros with live goats tied to the top (some standing up!) 

We hit lots of traffic before we even got to Accra but we eventually made it back not too late.