Sunday, February 20

Botanical Gardens

The Volta Dam

We are getting ready to go to church this morning and will be visiting a different church than last week. While we thought that last week's service was lively, we are told that it will appear subdued in comparison to what we are in store for today -- more singing, more dancing, more clapping.

Yesterday we took a break from work and all packed into an 11 passenger van to hit some of the popular tourist destinations and see what Ghana has to offer. Our first stop was the Botanical Gardens. However, a drive that would have taken no more than a couple hours in Canada, stretched into a 5 hour marathon due to heavy traffic and poor road conditions. If you thought potholes were bad in Canada, you haven't seen anything! Some of us are even nursing bruises from our heads hitting the roof. After visiting the Botanical Gardens we stopped at our guide's house for lunch on the mountaintop before heading off to see the Volta Dam and Lake Volta, the largest man-made lake in the world. The dam generates 65% of Ghana's electricity. It was an impressive sight and we received a guided tour of the dam's inner workings. On our way back, we made a pit stop to the one thing that most of us had been dying to see -- monkeys. Unfortunately, our first sighting of Ghanaian monkeys was was not in the wild but in a zoo. After another long drive home with a few wrong turns along the way we arrived back at the guest house exhausted after spending 16 hours on the road.

-- Daniel