I have my ticket!

I just bought my bus ticket and I’m leaving for my safari at 3PM tomorrow!

I’ll spend about 13 hours on the bus and arrive in Tamale at 4AM. From there, I’ll have to find a bus or trotro going to Mole National Park, which allegedly takes about 3 hours. I’ll spend however long I need to at Mole, and I’m quite excited about it because I read that from the pool at the motel inside the park, you can see the elephants’ watering hole. Imagine how incredible that would be, just swimming and watching elephants! I hope the internet wasn’t lying!

My tentative plan after Mole is to find a way to get to Paga, so I can go swimming in the sacred crocodile pool. Haha, yeah right! I’m not stupid enough for that. The local children swim in the pool and ride on their backs across. I’m not local, however, so I’ll do the tourist thing... buy some chickens to feed to the crocodiles, and go with an experienced guide to touch the crocodile and sit on its back for a picture. Yes, I’m stupid enough to do that much. How amazing would that be? Seriously, how many people do you know who have sat on the back of a crocodile and lived to tell about it? I decided to do Paga after Mole just in case something bad happens (like a crocodile bite, which I’m afraid would take longer to heal than a dog bite), then at least I’ll have had my chance to see an elephant.

Elephants are my favorite animals in the world! This will be my first time seeing them in the wild!

After Paga, I might try to spend a night in Techimen, because it’s not far from this one monkey sanctuary where allegedly the monkeys just come out and hang out with locals, and sometimes steal their food. That just seems like a fun thing to do, don’t you think? I’d also like to visit the cultural center in Kumasi, possibly, and maybe the zoo. (Although I have a feeling that after seeing the animals in the wild, the zoo won’t do much for me, you know?)

Well, all this is tentative. I have no idea how long I’ll be gone or when I’ll be back. I don’t have any set plans, other than a Gh¢19.50 bus ticket for Tamale. I can’t believe it took me this long to start, but I can blame FRED! He said he wanted to go with me, but he wasn’t 100% sure, so he asked me to wait for him. I postponed and postponed my trip just to find out he’s too busy! So now I’m going alone. Fred thought that maybe Mavis might want to come, and she wants to, but she has classes and no money. So... I’m traveling alone. It’s a good thing I’m so damn independent!

I realize that I still haven’t written about Cape Coast yet. Maybe I’ll start writing later tonight. I finally was able to post pictures, though! I put them on Facebook. Here are the links, if you’re interested to see the pictures of Cape Coast and Kakum & Elmina. You don’t even have to have a Facebook account to view them!