Easter arrived, and with my original plans of parading my friend Bowman around to all of the tourist hot spots (and believe me, Sub-Saharan Africa is hot) unraveling, I embarked on a week of relaxation and time away from Accra. Setting off in an eastwardly direction, my colleagues and I were off to explore some of the more remote portions of Ghana.
One of the first activities we decided to tackle was climbing Mount Adaklu. My trusty guidebook indicated that there were guided hikes to the mountain summit, a reasonably demanding 2-4 hour round trip, which I interpreted to mean an easy 1-2 hour trip. Why I’ve irrationally concluded that I am entitled to revise the difficulty level and time estimates is beyond me, since I am far from 50% more efficient than the average backpacker. Perhaps overconfident from our successful mountain trek, we woke up well hydrated from the beers consumed the night before and began our pursuit of the Adaklu summit.
The first step was to get a private taxi to the base of the mountain. Before you negotiate price, it’s essential to communicate your destination, which can be a workout all by itself. This particular encounter went as follows, and is a pretty good proxy for the rest. -Where are you going? -Adaklu. -Where? -Adaklu. -Adaklu? -Yes, Adaklu. -Oh…Adaklu. (Yes that’s exactly what I said.)
Well, our particular chauffer politely dropped us at the base of the mountain and pointed upward along the path that would lead us to the mountain summit. Believing him, we started navigating our way through the poorly marked trail. After thirty minutes of hiking, we finally came to a dead end. Feeling as though we had been duped, we retraced our steps back to the base of the mountain. Come to find out, the driver dropped us at the house of an obruni family, and we had spent the previous thirty minutes meandering through the family farm. I’m not certain they were expecting visitors during their Easter breakfast, but their cordiality masked any resentment.
So after correcting our driver’s wrong, and being redirected forty-five minutes to the actual base of the mountain, we finally began our guided ascent. Reasonably demanding might have been an understatement. As I was belaying myself up the mountain, my unstable and trembling legs were fighting to keep my body upright. I guess I should have been more concerned about the descent. On the way down, my buddies were concernedly asking Are you alright? Almost echoing as I continued to lose footing and slide down the mountainside. Maybe that’s how I concluded that the hike would only take me 1-2 hours. After all, falling off the side of the mountain is definitely more expedient than the slow descent.
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