Mole Animal Reserve

This weekend's excursion was long but over all pretty neat. We started by heading almost directly north up Ghana along the main thoroughfare. We were under the impression the trip would be a 12 hour drive but when we got on the bus we were told by the driver it would be about 10 hours. 15 hours later…….we pulled up to Mole (pronounced molay). The last 50 miles pretty much did us all in. It took us 3 hours because the road was SO SO SO bumpy. It pretty much felt like a 3 hour long seizure! We had to laugh because it was so unbelievable. Shoes were flying everywhere, bags falling off the racks. Made me think of what cousin Dallin said while serving his mission in the Ukraine, “Who put this piece of road in the middle of all these potholes?!” Totally true. A day later when we headed back to Accra we knew what to expect so it was more enjoyable. Still seemed remarkable that 50 miles could take so long, but I think we all felt a little closer after the tripJ

Arriving at Mole, we were greeted with some special guests at our door. The room next door had three warthogs just chillin’ on the doorstep. Freaked us out. We were all scared to do anything, especially when we took photos and they started to grunt and growl. But the keeper of the place came up and just started chucking rocks at their face, hitting them hard too! Sure enough they all got up and started running and we were like “wow, hang on, we’re all just hangin out right here!” Apparently they weren’t interested in us.

Not too bad really. Only some of the rooms had lizards~

Yawa, our tour guide, woke us up the next morning with a knock on our door. We went on an early morning walking “safari” through all the brush. Erin asked our armed guide if we were in the forest or the jungle. All he said was, “Yes, forest jungle”. Hmmm, ok.

Look how close!

Probably never gets old, even for the villagers

Baboon is just running by! So great

This is a close up of a fuzzy little bug on a twig.

I wanted to pet it...but was afraid my finger might fall off!

So, on our forest jungle walk we saw elephants, lots of antelope, warthogs, and baboons. We walked through a village before we went deep in the bush and these elephants, warthogs, and baboons were living right with the people. It’s like that resort somewhere in Africa that was built right where some elephants had always migrated. After the building was completed, the elephants just kept coming, migrating right through the lobby. Crazy.

When we got back, we went to our rooms but couldn’t enter because we found another guest waiting for us. A huge elephant was chowin’ down on the bushes right outside mine and Carlie’s room.

It would wrap its trunk around the bushes and yank out some leaves. Fun to watch because I’ve never seen an elephant outside of the zoo.

We went on another walk later in the evening, but most of the action was in the mornings. From our back porch we could see the elephant bathing in the water. We would eat dinner on the back porch facing the view of all the “forest jungle” and would watch the sun go down. So picturesque.