Ghana Part IV: Two Waterfalls, A Second Canopy Walk, & A Tale of Three Mountains
“Ssssst! Sssst!” I look up from the dim rocky path at the guide who is trying to get my attention. He and my colleague Williams are dimly illuminated by the flashlight mode on my phone, in a veritable tunnel surrounded by vines, creepers and leaves, dangling out of the complete darkness.
“Off light!” the guide whispers emphatically, making a downward gesture.
“What?” I’m not expected this.
“Off light! Someone is coming!” Hastily I turn off my light and we’re plunged into inky blackness. Around us the rainforest rustles with the night breezes. I remember what he had said earlier, illegal loggers, chainsawmen, come up the mountain at night to cut trees. We’d seen the freshly cut stumps and partially sawn up logs on the way up. Were we about to run into a chainsaw wielding criminal at night in the jungle?
It had been a four hour drive from Accra, “Eastward Ho!” to the city of Ho 165 kilometers to the northeast. Once out of the city we were driving through rural areas and small villages, and at one point crossed the bridge over the Volta at a point where it merely looks like a very large river. Just north of that point the Akosombo Dam blocks the river and holds back the largest (by surface area) man made reservoir on earth, covering 8,502 square kilometers, 3.6% of Ghana’s land area. The dam was completed in 1965, displacing 1% of Ghana’s population. 80% of the dam’s hydroelectric power has always been used for operating a major aluminum smelter, while the remaning 20% is sufficient for most of Ghana’s power needs.
The amusingly named town of “Ho” (which means “river” in the Ewe language) lies nestled under some small but steep mountains, and presumably prominently on some river (though the river I’ve seen running through the center of town doesn’t look terribly remarkable today).
We were here last year, and once again the support staff (and trainees when they arrived) would be lodged at the Ghanaian National Association of Teachers (GNAT) hostel on the same grounds as the training venue. And once again I’d be put up in a nicer hotel a hundred meters down the road. For the record when asked about accommodation I had said I preferred if there was a spare bed in a village, so I didn’t ask for this, but I won’t object too strenuously to being given a room with AC. The hotel I was put up in is a bizarre place because it’s big, and seems nice, but most evenings I appeared to be the only guest, and at most I counted lights on in three other rooms once, of surely over 100. I suppose their staffing costs are pretty light, but I can’t help but wonder if the whole hotel just exists as some (corrupt?) rich person’s vanity project. When I asked those around me why there was never anyone else at the hotel the universal answer is “it’s too expensive.” (I think the rooms are like $40 a night, I don’t know I didn’t handle it).
Here we had another inauguration ceremony for a regional beekeeping association we had organized and then spent the rest of the week training local youth in beekeeping during field visits and presentations in the lecture hall.
That Sunday, it was time to make the most of our one day off. My colleague Williams, the one colleague who has been with me for the whole previous five weeks and is just fantastic, had made arrangements for a car and driver for the day for 900 cedis ($78.60 USD). Additionally another friend and colleague, Nadia, whom we’d worked with last year but was only just joining us this year, arrived in the morning.
Got started a bit later due to awaiting Nadia’s arrival, around 10am we headed up into the mountains that loom up just beside Ho, at which time there were still morning mists hanging picturesquely over the cute mountain villages and in the little valleys around which we wound by sharp turns. Around noon we arrived at our first stop. A canopy walk at the Amedzofe forest reserve. From Amedzofe village we had to park and take motorbikes the last kilometers (motorbikists eagerly arrived for our business, 10 cedis (88 cents) per person each way). Paid our entry fee (115 cedis? $10.04 USD)
Our guide was charismatic and knowledgeable. He explained that the reserve was recently created at the urging of herpatologists to preserve the endangered “slippery frog.” He confessed that they used to eat it locally, but no longer do, and that it is indeed slippery. The slippery frog is listed as critically endangered, and was thought to be extinct as there were no sightings reported for over twenty years, though it has more recently been discovered that there are a few surviving populations in Togo and Ghana.
The main attraction here though, for those of us who didn’t come on a quest to find the most slippery frog, was a canopy walk in front of a waterfall! To get there we had to descend 159 steps down a steep slope to the canopy walk and back up again. Which seemed like a lot at the time but that was nothing compared to later in the day, and apparently some find the steps “endearing.”
On one side a beautiful waterfall cascaded down the cliff face, while in the other direction the prestine preserve valley stretched before us with no signs of human development. Altogether very nice.
From there Williams asked me if I wanted to go to the tallest waterfall in Ghana or the tallest mountain, both of which are in this area. I would always choose the waterfall, I love waterfalls but I’m actually not that enamored of reaching peaks. But I could tell he really wanted to do the peak even though he was leaving it up to me and trying not to let his wishes influence me too much. So I conceded for his sake that “well we’ve already been to a waterfall today I guess.”
Took about two hours to get to the base of the mountain, arriving there around 15:30. The guide there mentioned the waterfall was actually quite close, but the waterfall would close at five while he’d be available to guide us up the mountain whenever. So we decided to do the waterfall first, me secretly thinking I wouldn’t mind if we ran out of time to do the mountain anyway.
At the entry center for the waterfall they as usual wanted to charge more for Willy’s DSLR camera. At other places it had only been 50 cedis and we’d paid it but in this case it was 200 ($17.47), compared to my adult non Ghanaian admission was only 40 cedis. So on this occasion we were obliged to leave the big camera behind. I still want to test my theory that if _I_ were the one carrying the camera it wouldn’t trigger their “commercial photography” / “documentary making” fees because us foreign dorks are always carrying big cameras.
The hike to the waterfall was a few kilometers along the river valley, through lush forest, crossing nine bridges. It was estimated to take 30–45 min, I’m not sure exactly how long we took. It was a lovely walk under a canopy of leaves that glowed in the afternoon light.
Wikipedia says “Wli Falls is the highest waterfall in Ghana and the tallest in West Africa.” which makes me wonder what the difference between highest and tallest is? I suppose height in this case is the actual altitude the waterfall is located at, afactor in waterfalls I’ve never thought to care about, but I could see how it could be used misleadingly to imply the waterfall is the tallest when they just mean it’s at high altitude. No matter, apparently this one is both!
The falls are known locally as Agoomatsa waterfalls — meaning, “Allow Me to Flow.” I didn’t catch the origin of Wli, I can only assume someone traveled back from the future to name them after my colleague Williams “Willy” Clinton Appoh (clearly the most famous William Clinton).
The falls are 80 meters in height and indeed impressive. On the cliffs on either side a huge colony of fruit bats were roosting, chittering, and occasionally flying about. Some people were bathing in the water, and the water temperature was quite alright, and I’d even thought to bring my swim trunks but left them in the car, d’oh!
From there hiked back without incident and drove back to the base of the mountain, it was now nearly 18:00 and approaching twilight. We were told it was only about an 800 meter hike (Though I was even then unsure if that was referring to the height of the mountain or the distance of the hike (spoiler alert, neither)), so I anticipated it wouldn’t be that long and we could be up there for sunset. Our guide and Willy also both seemed optimistic
After an initial flat approach for 100 meters or so the trail commenced to climb at about a 45 degree angle, which it maintained for most of the hike. Apparently they’ve never heard of switchbacks. I began to regret that at this point I hadn’t eaten since a small bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, and later began to also regret having not taken a waterbottle with me.
We passed the first “quarter way” mark, and then the half. We could hear chainsaws buzzing in the not to distant distance, the guide said it was illegal logging that happens a lot on this mountain. He said every day there are 4–5 chainsawmen working on the mountain, sometimes even at night. If the police do happen to come someone at the base warns the chainsawmen in ample time for them to make themselves scarce. Another time the immigration department (for some reason?) came and just heavily fined the people financing it but didn’t actually take any measures that would stop it. We also passed sawn timber that had not yet been taken down the mountain.
The sun set, darkness set in. We used the flashlights on our phones to keep going. Hiking in more open areas at night I’ve liked to use no flashlight, eyes adjusting to the dimness — but with the very uneven terrain and almost complete lack of light coming through the thick canopy that was not an option. It seemed to take forever to get to the third quarter sign, I suspect they weren’t evenly spaced but it could be just that I was getting that tired. Finally got there and Willy asked if I wanted to turn around but I am not a quitter, so we kept going!
Reached the summit at almost exactly 19:00. It was by now completely night, the sky full of stars overhead, a crescent moon at its height. In the valley below us we could see the twinkling lights of many villages. Holding our phone lights to illuminate the guide, DSLR set up on its tripod, Williams interviewed him because despite his protests to the contrary he’s really always making documentary footage.
And then we started down the mountain. Going down a steep mountain is a bit less tiring than going up, but still difficult, very hard on the leg muscles as you’re constantly “putting the breaks on.”
About halfway down we encountered the light coming up and doused our lights. As they approached our guide determined he recognized him though he still called out a challenge and we only turned our lights on when he was sure — it was one of his colleagues come up to check on us. We continued on down to the car, where we arrived around 20:30, finding our friend Nadia sound asleep in the back seat.
Later I did some googling to reconcile the situation of being told its the highest peak while seeing a nearby peak that looked clearly taller. While Afadjato touts itself as Ghana’s highest peak at 885m and this is echoed on many websites including wikipedia, I don’t believe it is true. Simply reading the topography lines on google maps seems to indicate its only 590m, behind nearby Mt Aduadu at 765m. One mountaineering website seems to also carry these numbers and reveals one more taller Ghanaian Mountain, Mt Lakleta at 908m, which google maps also corroborates. So I submit that the popularly held belief about what Ghana’s highest mountain is is actually incorrect.
