The Quest for Mole

Thursday.

I woke up this morning at 4:00 am, midnight your time. And we were out the door by 5:00. We walked through the dark field to Shell and grabbed a taxi in record time. We asked the driver to take us to one of the trotro stations in Cape Coast and he took us to the wrong one. We said that we needed a tro to go to Kumasi, but he was trying to get us to take a bus. So, while we drove from Elmina to Cape Coast, and then back towards Elmina and once again to Cape Coast we fought with him on if we could or could not take a trotro to Kumasi.

We were right, and found a tro that was almost full. With the addition of the five of us, we topped it off and we were on our way. As we were pulling out of the station people started yelling about the tire. So the driver got out to look at it. Clair and I were in the back intently listening to them talk about the tire issue, and Carla was a few rows ahead laughing at us, because clearly we had no idea what they were saying. Finally Clair just said "is the tire OK?" And the driver said yes, so she said "ok, let's go!"

It was about a 4 hour ride to Kumasi, and the tro smelled slightly of hot dog poop. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about, because you all know! We made one stop for a road side pee, and overall made pretty good time.

When the trotro dropped us off we took a taxi to the STC bus station. We were keeping our fingers crossed that we could take a STC because it has AC, and soft seats and is really nice. If this bus was full we would have to take a metro bus, that has wooden benches. We got to the station and there were still tickets for us, so we bought them, went pee and got a diet coke for the long drive. Side note on going pee at the STC station. I had to use the womens urinal, which is basically a room of tile, with a tile gutter you stand over and pee. Awkward. This is the reason why I wear dresses when I travel.....however I will confess to it now, because it really is funny...at a later stop to pee, I once again had to use the lady urinal, but I ended up peeing on my dress. I'm disgusting.

The bus ride was nice during the first half when three of us shared the back seat that was meant for five. However, after the pee on the dress stop we picked up more passengers and then we were packed in. It was a bumpy ride to begin with, but being in the back seat just made the bumps 10 times more bouncy. Also, we had the pleasure of watching a horrible soap opera. The volume was so loud and blown out, and after five hours we had enough!

We finally made it to Kumasi. We decided that because we had been sitting for so long, that we would walk to the place we are spending the night. Of course all of the taxi drivers were trying to tell us that it was too far to walk. Lucky for us we had ripped out a few pages from a travel book that had a map. It was nice walking because we got to see more of the town and the people. There are some really big and beautiful mosques here, and the people were all very friendly and welcoming. They all just wave and say hello. The little kids are always the best.

We made it to the Catholic Guest House, which really makes me feel like I am at church camp. We went to check in, and they told us that there was no reservation for tonight, and that the reservation was for Tuesday, but we didn't show up. So we had to go through the fact that we called for TODAY about 10 times. Then we said, ok.....do you have rooms for us? She said no, and we had a small small panic attack. But the she sat at the computer and there was suddenly two rooms open....so, we have a room.

We all decided that we were too lazy / tired to venture out for food, so we ate at the guest house. Big mistake in the food department. We ended up getting spaghetti! Not what we had in mind, but we were so happy that we could just walk right back to our rooms. We are going to bed now, because we have to leave at 3:30 am to get bus tickets!! Ahhh early morning. Once we arrive tomorrow we will have two nights in the same spot, so we get a normal amount of sleep one of the nights!

So far, so good on our journey.

Peace. Love. 7:30 bed time.