Last Thursday's Tiyul to Shai Hills

Hey everyone, Rivky here. Wanted to tell everyone about our cool day on Thursday, visiting Shai Hills Forest Reserve.

Yamit really wanted to do something, so even though Zahava and I are lazy shlubs who didn't mind staying in Accra, we agreed to do a one-day trip, and it actually ended up being awesome. We decided to go to Shai Hills Forest Reserve, which is this huge park about 50 km from Accra. As expected by the name, Shai Hills is a reserve for wildlife and animals. The guidebook and one of the blogs we read beforehand said that we should wear sneakers, but I figured, it's a walk around a preserve, why can't I wear flip flops? Bad call on my part, but I'll get to that later.

We left Legon at 7:15 AM, and 3 tro-tros later (to 37 bus station, to Ashaiman bus station, and then to Doryumu), we were left off at the side of the road right in front of the entrance to the reserve. (1) We paid 11 cedi each (2) for a two hour hike and then set off with our guard, Timothy.

About 10 minutes into our walk, Timothy spotted our first baboons. We walked towards the baboons and they walked towards us, and Timothy encouraged us to attempt to feed them, though he warned us they might reject our food. We gave them crackers straight out of our hands- it was awesome. They literally walked over, reached into my hand, took out the cracker, and ate it. So amazing. We fed monkeys a couple of weeks ago, which was also a cool experience (we held bananas out to them and they peeled and ate them), but baboons are considerably more humanlike- for example, they walk instead of swinging on branches. I wish I could have taken pictures, but a stolen camera make that more difficult.

After we left the baboons, we kept walking around the reserve. We walked up to a watering hole, at which antelope and other animals drink, but none were there at the time. As we walked, Timothy gave us a little history of the cave we were going to be visiting, which was where a tribe had lived in the late 1800s, when they were hiding out. (From the Ashanti? From the British? Both? It was slightly hard to community with Timothy, though he was a really sweet guy. We gave him a Cliff Bar, that's how much we liked him.)

Eventually, we started climbing. We figured it would just be a short climb and then we'd enter the cave on ground level, like caves in Israel or America I've been to. Instead, it was an entire ordeal to get there; it's not that the hike was the toughest thing in the world, but it was definitely more challenging than anything I've done in a while. We got to the cave after about an hour, and it was rocky and dark, and smelled slightly like bats. It seemed like a tough place to live for years, but Zahava was pretty sure she would have loved it. Most of the hike was climbing through dirt and rocks and branches, but then the last 10 minutes was basically climbing up rocks. By this point, my flip flops were useless; they had zero traction as it is, and my feet were so sweaty that I slipped out of one trying to get from one rock to another. Timothy advised me to take them off and do it barefoot, which was a scary but weirdly cool experience. (4)

When we got to the top, we sat on the peak for a while and looked around. Accra, the capitol city, is not beautiful; it's a loud, crowded city, with a lot of garbage and pollution. One would never call it scenic. And though I haven't traveled too extensively, it seems pretty clear that Ghana is not known for being a gorgeous country. That doesn't mean I don't like living here- Teaneck isn't the most gorgeous place either, but I like it a lot for other things. I like Accra a lot. But from the top of this peak in the forest reserve, it really was nice. Relatively dry, with random spurts of trees. There was one long chain of trees, with Timothy attributed to water running in that direction.

The climb down was slightly difficult, and then the walk back was nice. We saw baboons again, and watched them for a while when we got back to the entrance. (5) We took two tro-tros to get back to Legon, and even though I was nervous about time and getting back after dark, we were back before 4, and because the water has been running much more regularly (6), we were all able to shower. No joke, that might have been the best part of the day.

(1) We were there by 10:30, which is actually a surprisingly short commute, considering how bad traffic is here.
(2) About $7ish.
(3) In my defense, keep in mind that I live in Teaneck, NJ, and now spend my college years in Baltimore. Neither are exactly the most intense hiking areas in the world.
(4) If I ever do the rock-climbing wall in the Hopkins gym, I want to do it barefoot!
(5) We sat and relaxed for a while. We also washed our feet in a spigot. Luxurious, no joke!
(6) A whole saga in and of itself.