A Three Hour Tour

Our weekend went quite smoothly this time around, with only minor hitches and frights!  Bill and I met with Chris and Sunyoung to begin our journey just before noon Saturday.  We left ISH with high hopes, and immediately got stuck in traffic for a dreadfully long time.  Upon arriving at the station at which we’d planned to catch a tro-tro, we were told that the tros to Asheman (where we’d planned on catching a connect to Adafoa) no longer ran through there, so we’d have to go to a nearby depot and look for them.  After wandering around Accra for a short time, unable to figure out where this mystery station was, we ran into a group of scruffy teenagers.  Christoph asked them for directions, and one led us to where we needed to be just in time for us to catch a car on the way to Asheman.  Upon our arrival there half an hour or so later, we climbed aboard another tro all the way up to Adafoa. 

This tro-tro held quite the group of characters, and they didn’t stop shouting at each other over 10 pesewa (roughly 5 US cents) for almost the entire 2-odd hour journey.  As we trucked through a small town near our destination, the tro-tro suddenly slammed on its brakes and everyone slid forward.  A small child had scampered across our path suddenly, and the driver had only barely avoided her.  Rather than reprimanding the small girl for running into the street in front of a vehicle, the mother screeched at the driver as if it had been his fault she’d nearly been turned into a pancake.  We got off the vehicle with great relief a short while later and had a light dinner of rice and fried chicken, during which we discussed video games, books, and the like.  From here we took a couple motorcycles to our island (we even drove through the sand and the water [though it was only maybe 8 inches deep]!) and trekked across a rickety bridge, at the end of which lay our destination.

Adafoa is a special island; on one side lies the Atlantic Ocean, and along the other runs the Volta River.  You can see where the two collide and fight each other, as I believe I have described in a previous blog when we made this same trip with Elvis.  After we got our room (a small hut made entirely of palm thatches), the four of us changed into our swimsuits and made a run for the Volta.  The water was quite warm and shallow where we played, only going to our necklines (though Chris swam out considerably further than this, as he is apt to do such things) and we stayed here until a good bit after dark.  I held onto Bill’s back like a sloth after a short while because, as I am prone to do, I got cold.  Chris kept swimming under the water and torpedoing Sunyoung, who squeaked “Chris!  Ah, no!” every time he picked her up and tossed her onto his shoulders, and then into the water.  He really didn’t relent until we dragged ourselves out of the water, dried off, and stood looking at the ocean crashing against our little island.  There were more stars than I’ve ever seen, and two small fishing crafts bobbed in the distant waves.  We sat under a small awning and talked until eleven PM before retreating to our hut, all thoroughly exhausted.

Unfortunately for Bill and I, the night did not go as planned.  Although Chris and Sunyoung fell asleep almost right away, the two of us were very uncomfortable on our slimy, lumpy beds, which were infested with sand.  There isn’t running water on the island, so Bill was quite miserable, as he is generally unable to sleep until he’s had a bath, and I heard him rustling around until around 3 AM, where he suddenly sat up and looked over at me.  Bear in mind that the hut was so dark it almost seemed brighter when we closed our eyes, and the rest of the island is just as bad (which is why all those stars were visible).  “Dude,” he whispered.  “I gotta get out of here.  I can’t even breathe in this stupid hut, it’s too hot.”  I sat up and agreed that it was terrible inside, but I didn’t want to leave because it was spooky out there.  Bill decided to leave anyway and disappeared.  I lay back down to wait for him, but realized he left his good flashlight inside with me and sat up, grabbing it with the intentions to bring it to him.  And then the door creaked, knocking against its frame slightly.  “Tck.”  It was dark, late, and a foreign environment, so my logic left me and I decided that rather than the wind causing this, there must be a ghost, and I froze.  The door knocked again, a little harder, and I lay back down and held terribly still.  The door knocked again several more times, in sharp staccato cracks.  “TckTckTckTck.”  As natural protection against the ghost, I turned on the flashlight and aimed it at the door. Silence.  More silence.  More silence.  After a minute or two with the light on and no knocking, I knew it must be a ghost, so I rolled out of the bed and crept forward towards the door, planning to find Bill and make him rescue me.  Just as I got to the door, it slowly (so, so slowly) swung inwards.  My eyes wide and my heart pounding, I thought, “this is it.  This is how I die.”  As the door opened ever wider, I stepped backwards once, twice, and it revealed to me…

Bill, standing there with his eyes wide, wondering what the hell I was doing, creeping in the doorway like that.  He stepped forward, leaning down to whisper in my ear that it was very creepy outside, and he had had an odd experience.  In my relief to see him, I interrupted his story with my own, and let him know that the hut was haunted and we were surely doomed.  He gave me his trade-marked (and patent pending) “what on earth is wrong with you” look and hushed me.  “I went out there to pee, but I stood in front of the door for a little while because I felt like there were people out there,” he whispered.  “When I looked down towards the river, these dark figures appeared out of the treeline and just kind of glided forward along the shore.  They were moving really, really fast, and when they disappeared into the darkness of the other trees, I came back in.”

Wanting to gather up the scraps of my dignity after being scared by a non-existent ghost, I offered to come with him this time, as long as we brought our knife and the light.  Together, this time, we stepped out of the doorway and headed slowly towards the bathroom.  I noticed a mound near our door and studied it for a moment before realizing it was one of the island dogs that I’d petted while the four of us had sat together earlier.  This was comforting, and we moved onward.  After a few steps east towards the latrine, I lost some of my earlier courage and held onto Bill’s arm.  It was very windy and dark, and it was so hard to see or hear anything.  We kept the flashlight off so as not to disturb any other guests (light can come in through the palm fronds that make up the huts), and so we didn’t attract any monsters, but we listened as hard as we could.  The howl of the wind and the rumble of the ocean were the only voices we could catch.  Once we made it to our destination, it became clear that the island had either lost its power or shut off every light, because the bathroom was completely dark.  “No.  No.  No.  Hell no.”  I dragged Bill back towards the hut, determined to get us away from the nightmare bathrooms.  “You can pee in the sand.”  He readily agreed, not thrilled at the idea of entering a dark cement hole that was probably coated in demonic bugs and pee, and we walked behind the huts, nearer to the ocean.  It was completely black, and the boats that had been fishing earlier seemed to have disappeared.  Bill later mentioned that he saw one light bobbing in the distance, but I failed to notice it.  As I always do when we’re by dark water, I thought of the time Bill told me “imagine what it must have been like to sail across the ocean 500 years ago.  Look how dark that is.  That’s terrifying.”  Sure enough, it scared me again, so I switched my focus to not stepping on anything undesirable.

When we arrived back at the hut after a short stumble (the way back seemed much faster than the walk there), I stood guard while Bill did what he needed to do (and politely buried it).  Once we were inside and laying down again, things were not much better (if at all).  We couldn’t sleep for a long time (though Chris and Sunyoung hadn’t stirred) and noticed light.  Someone was walking around somewhere, shining their light at the huts.  Bill kept thinking about the lame excuse for a lock our door had (a small slat of wood that rotated in front of the inward-swinging door so nobody could open it from the outside) and how anyone with a stick could poke it inside our hut between the door and its loose frame and knock the “lock” aside easily.  Just as things seemed to calm down, our watch dog barked a few times and fell silent.  We were back on edge, listening as hard as we could for people sounds, and heard a sound like someone coughing or clearing their throat not too far away.  Bill sat up and held completely still, knife in hand, and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  After a few minutes he settled back onto his pillow and set the knife aside, finally falling asleep shortly thereafter.

A few short hours later, we got up and dragged ourselves to breakfast, telling Chris and Sunyoung of our nighttime woes.  “Oh, but we were right there!  You should have woken us!”  Sunyoung jokingly reprimanded us.  After omelets, tea, and coffee, we went for a swim in the ocean.  The current was obscene, and the waves blasted us with rocks and trash, so we clambered out of the water and went back to the river, where we wiled away most of the morning.  When we got back out, it was lunch time, and I shared my sandwich with our guard dog in gratitude.  Chris and Sunyoung visited the hammocks for a nap and a read, and Bill and I stayed at the table, where I read and Bill slept for most of the rest of the afternoon.  At almost 5 we left, taking motorcycles to the tro-tro stop, and headed home to ISH.

We took showers the moment we got back, and went to bed before 10.

—

Upon waking Monday morning, the power went out.  I went down to Bill’s room and sat in his chair while he tried to sleep, attempting to ignore the steadily increasing temperature in the room.  Finally, around 1 or 2, we gave up and decided to go to the mall to watch a movie, just so we could escape the heat.  Boy was it our lucky day!  We went to the theater and got tickets, popcorn, and a drink for about 7USD a piece.  We saw GI Joe, which was horrendous and cheesy, but it had lots of explosions, which we liked.  When we left, the tro-tro station was insane, and rather than subject ourselves to the writhing mass of bodies, we talked to a taxi driver to see his prices for the return journey.  He actually gave us the right price on the first go-round, so we hopped in the car and Bill tipped him when we got out.  The taxi driver looked like his entire life had just been made, and tried to get Bill’s number so he could become his personal taxi driver.  Bill escaped this, stating we were leaving soon, while I negotiated an escape from Louisa the Tantalizer, who was waiting for us outside of the hostel.  And, much to our happy disbelief, the power was back on (and the water was flowing, too)! 

All in all, it was a good weekend.