A few years back I organized a camping trip with 4 friends and myself. One of my friends has a VW Westfalia Camper Van and I have a VW Double cab. The idea was to do some car camping and just have fun for a few days. From Accra we went north up into the mountains near Aburi. We stopped at Aburi botanical gardens and did some lunch out of the back of our cars. After eating we took a bit of a walk.
We bought some veggies and some beer and found some palm wine to drink. After provisioning we got back on the road for a short drive to a waterfall near by.
We parked the old dubs by the side of the road and took this picture before continuing on foot to the waterfall.
It is a short hike to the waterfall maximum 30 minutes. The way in is primarily down hill into a valley. Sadly the weekend we chose was a holiday weekend so there were a lot of people on the trail.
There were even more people at the waterfall. They had set up speakers and were making a lot of noise and had blocked the pool at the base of the waterfall to make it deeper for swimming. Needless to say we were not really feeling the vibe or nature there that day. So we did not stay for too long and hiked back up the hill.
This is one of my friends on the trip Eli he is a character, an artist and a poet. Here he is striking a pose at the waterfall base.
We went up the road a little further until the road ended and found a quite place to set up camp for the night. My friend sleeps in is camper van with one other person and my truck bascially turns into the kitchen table where food and dinner is organized.
I setup 3 hammocks for the rest of us hanging off some palm trees and tied off to my truck.
A selfie of my hanging out in my hammock. The night was interesting one of my friends turned their hammock upside down and got all freaked out. Another one did not brink a tarp or rain fly as instructed and got caught in a little rain and ended up sleeping in the back seat of my truck.
The next morning was a new day and we got back on the road. We continued into the mountains a little further and then we wound our way down out of the mountains and met the volta river.
We crossed the Volta river and went up a road on the other side and then found a side road that took us to a quiet area by the river side. We found a spot with a little house that no one was currently living in but the care taker said we could camp in the area. So we set camp and enjoyed the beautiful views around us.
The sky was very dramatic that day with blue sky and big clouds.
At the river side you can see some fish farming activities. Basically we had the place to ourselves though and were enjoying the nature and solitude.
Eli grew up along this river and was the one who felt brave enough to take a swim. As I have stated in posts before I am very leery of swimming in slow moving water because of diseases and parasites you can get that are harbored in snails so I stayed out of the water even though it would have been very refreshing to swim.
We had a little devils lettuce and enjoyed that one too.
The next morning the area was so beautiful with a low lying mist and dew upon everything.
I had a nice view of the yellow camper van from my hammock.
Some more lounging around.
Here you can see some white birds in the distance taking off from the river with the low lying fog. It was a great site and feeling in the morning.
Before long we packed up and headed back to Accra. This was not without its own fair share of adventure though. My friend in the camper van got stuck about 100 meters from our camp site and we were working on getting him out when someone came with a rope and I used my truck to pull him out. There were a few other sketchy places but we made it out without incident.
Thanks for tagging along on another trip.