Invisible Elephants

With an entire week devoted to vacation, I was able to finally travel to the northern portion of Ghana with the Fellows. The weeklong adventure from Accra brought about our banaustic concerns; Will we be able to find food? Will we be able to put a roof over our head? Thankfully, yes. The week culminated in our extended stay at Mole National Park, home to approximately 800 elephants, 1000 buffalo, hyenas, and as my guidebook mentioned, a “significant population of hippos”. Side note: It turns out that Mole National Park does not, in fact, have any hippos, as multiple park rangers laughed when I inquired.

I’ll start off by saying, it really was all our fault. We knew that November was not the ideal time to travel to Mole National Park, but seeing as we don’t get to select which days Ghana declares as national holidays, we figured we would take our chances.

After settling into our lodging, we relaxed poolside before we would participate in a dusk walking safari. Upon arriving at the launch of the walking safari, the park found themselves slightly understaffed, and as a consequence, boondoggled us into taking the dusk driving safari. Not only did the price of our safari just increase threefold, but the vehicle was overcapacity. The four other Fellows sat on the roof while I sat in the backseat of the Nissan X-Trail fending off tsetse flies with my new Danish friends Henry and Tia. (Only later did I find out from German Fellow Sebastian that Henry’s name was actually the Nordic Henrick, but that’s a mere digression).

Oh, and also using the word safari fell nowhere shy of deceit. I could have gone on stroll through my grandmother’s neighborhood and seen as much wildlife as our driving “safari”. Disgruntled by my current situation in the back of the X-Trail, when the park ranger informed us that we were allowed to ask him questions, I was quick to ask So where are all the animals? (In their natural habitat was his equally hostile response). In total, from my backseat, I saw three living species that the driver identified for me (if you include the baby crocodile that I didn’t actually see, but instead saw the moving bushes as it scurried away). I also saw a python and dozens of antelope. Only later did I find out from the roofdeck Fellows that the python was a puff adder and the baby croc was a lizard. My “safari” driver only appropriately identified one of the three species I “saw” on the driving safari. His batting average on my mediocre off-roading excursion fell shy of Ted Williams’ even on an off year. I suppose it is appropriate that Nissan advertises the X-Trail as the compact SUV that makes adventures out of the ordinary.

After regrouping, the following day we stood strong and set off on both a dawn and dusk walking safari. With this, at least if we didn’t see anything exciting, we would log some solid hiking hours. It was one giant game of hide and seek, where the hiders had the upper hand. I thought that with the number of eyes and the distance covered that sheer luck would lead us to stumble upon at least one elephant. I thought wrong. Over a combined five hours we failed to identify any hyenas, hippos, elephants, or buffalo. I have heard many tales of the serious magic that occurs in Northern Ghana but for obvious reasons, did not believe it. I guess I’m a converted believer. After all, 800 elephants cast under the invisibility spell is pretty powerful magic.