The Agrinautica

Sunday, June 25th, Day 52 - Originally Williams and I were going to have the car and driver we'd hired for the day pick us up at 07:00 because we had a busy day of adventures planned. He said Nadia was going to arrive here last night and join us, though given how she's failed to come through every other time I tried to make plans with her I wasn't surprised when she didn't show up. But Williams said he talked to her and she'd come on an early bus in the morning, we'd just postpone our departure to 08:00 to suit. I advised him to call her to make sure she actually was on that bus.
   08:00 rolled around and I hadn't heard from anyone. At 09:15 I tried calling Williams but got no answer. So I walked the 100 meters to the training center (like in Tamale it's the GNAT Hall which conveniently has an event hall, hostel and canteen) to get breakfast and see if I could roust him / find out what was going on / have breakfast.
   It turns out he had overslept but no matter Nadia was actually about to arrive, which she did so at 09:30 and by 09:45 we were actually on our way! Nadia will be with us for the rest of this last week which will be fun. Of the "old crew" from last year its mostly just been Williams and I -- Samuel too but he never spends a minute with us outside of work, as far as I can tell he spends all of his non working time studying the bible which good for him but I'm not about to join him. He's very nice though. And I've been getting along very well with Williams but it will nice to be three instead of just the two of us.

   Around noon we arrived at our first stop. A canopy walk at the Amedzofe forest reserve. This is a mountainous area, the road curving along lushly forested mountains, through some cute mountain villages, fog mists hanging across the valleys. Arrived at Amedzofe village (?) and had to 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?

[Augh phone browser just prompted "restore from draft" for some reason and tanked the next several hundred words of writing 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬]

Okay switching from phone to computer now. I hate rewriting what I just wrote so the following will probably be more brusk than the original version.



Our guide was nice. The reserve apparently was recently created at the urging of herpatologists to preserve the endangered "slippery frog." Guide said they used to eat it locally but no longer do, and that it is indeed slippery. [coming back to add things as I get less grumpy about this. The slippery frog is listed as critically endangered, was thought to be extinct as there were no sightings reported for over twenty years, though it has been discovered there are a few surviving populations in Togo and Ghana.]

There was a canopy walk in front of a waterfall, with a great view the other direction into the preserve valley with no signs of human development. Altogether very nice. I probably wrote a few paragraphs about this originally, fuck it makes me mad when things get deleted.



There were 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." The walkways were mostly in very good condition, though these steps were pretty dodgy.



   From there Williams asked me if I wanted to go to the tallest waterfall in Ghana or the tallest mountain. 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. But 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. There the guide 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. Assume I had some lovely descriptions here originally.

[okay now I'm caught up to what I hadn't written yet]

   Wikipedia says Wli Falls is "Wli Waterfalls is the highest waterfall in Ghana and the tallest in West Africa." which makes me wonder what the difference between highest and tallest is? Maybe one is referring to the actual altitude it is located at? A factor in waterfalls I've never thought to care about, but I could see how it could be used misleadingly to say a waterfall is the highest just because its at a higher altitude. 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 returned to the base of the mountain, it was now nearly 18:00 and approaching twilight. It was only about an 800 meter hike (I think, though I'm still not sure if it was or they were conflating the hike distance with the altitude of the summit, which was 885 meters), so I anticipated it wouldn't be that long and we could be up there for sunset. Our guide and Willy also 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 outmeal 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. 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.
   I'm very confused about the height and/or identity of this mountain. We were told and I'm pretty sure it was Mount Afadja, height 885 meters. The signboard at the top was labeled "Mount Afadja" but it looked more like it was meant to be a picture frame framing the mountain just to the east that did look taller. Our guide explained that that was Mount Aduadu, whose peak is at a higher elevation but its not considered the tallest mountain because its not freestanding as this one is. I really don't think that's how it works? And on any account wikipedia says Mount Aduadu is 746 meters. But it looked taller, and the picture from its peak on wikipedia clearly has it looking down on Mt Afadja, and the pictures on wikipedia look like they match what I saw as the respective peaks so.. this is just confusing? And on top of that on the Mt Aduadu wikipedia page it says it's the second tallest mountain in Ghana ... behind Mt Lakleta at 908 meters?!?! My Lakleta doesn't have a wikpedia page, though googling does bring up references to it on dedicated mountaineering websites. Google maps puts a pin right on Mt Aduadu, and labeled as such, if one puts Mt Lakleta in the search. Putting the GPS coordinates from one of the mountaineering websites into google maps it drops a pin to the east of these two mountains, at a peak altitude that looks to match the the listed 908. And it is juuuust inside the border from Togo so I can see why it is some times not counted.
   Looking at the google terrain map and counting topography lines, it looks to me that Mt Afadja is actually between 560 and 580 meters, indeed shorter than Aduadu, third behind Lakleta. Thanks for bearing with my tangental livejournal entry, wherein we discover the public information being put out around Mt Afadja is incorrect and several wikipedia entries probably need to be corrected. I feel like "if I were a good citizen" I'd correct those wikipedia pages but I can't really be bothered, if someone wants to get their good citizen points up. While we're at it I just used the measure distance tool on google maps and from the car park to the peak is 1.08km so the the 800 meter number is neither the height nor hike length!
   The moral of this story is as with the fact checks on things told to us by our other guides, they are usually locals repeating what they heard from someone who heard from someone etc etc and while they'll usually get you in the ballpark of the actual story, if you for example were going to go on and write an article or something based on information told to you by a local guide I would take them as very low reliability for actual facts you're about to set down on paper.


I've taken the liberty of drawing in my rough guess of the course of the hiking trail here. Dropped pin is the mysterious Mt Lakleta

   Anyway back to the story, so Williams, who despite his constant protests to the contrary is secretly always basically making documentaries, video interviewed our guide at the peak. And then we headed down. Which is easier but its still hard on the legs going down a 45 degree angle (okay while I got the google map open I looked at it and its 600 meters to climb the last 300 meters, so literally a 30 degree angle which feeeeels like a 45 degree angle when you're hiking it, I honestly thought I was exaggerating by more lol).
   At one point our guide, who was in the lead, saw a light coming up the trail towards us and emphatically whispered for us to off lights. I remembered at that point what he'd said about loggers being active even at night. As the light approached the guide thought he recognized him, called out hesitantly, and on hearing the response told us we could turn our lights on again, it was one of his colleagues coming up to see if we were alright. We were around the halfway point at that time. As we hiked I'd occasionally shine my light into the surrounding trees hoping to catch the reflective eyes of a nocturnal animal. I've been on fauna surveys in Australian national parks where we saw quite a lot of nocturnal animals by such "spotlighting," but I didn't see anything. As we trudged along I fantasized about pizza.



   Got back to the car around 20:30. The extra high fee for our guide after hours came out to 100 cedis ($8.74). Nadia, who had remained behind, was fast asleep in the back seat.
   Felt like it took forever to drive home. In the numerous villages we drove through it appeared most people were sitting on their front steps whiling away the evening, or otherwise slowly strolling about with their friends. I know I've said this many times before, but as someone who is no fan of just turning one's brain off and turning on the TV, I envy the lifestyle where people aren't retreating into their houses in the evening but hanging out outside all evening.

   Williams said there was food for us waiting at the GNAT canteen, we didn't know exactly what it was but I'd been fantasizing about pizza all day, so requested if there was a pizza place in town if we could stop there and get pizza, so we did. Got one pizza for me and one for Nadia and Williams (I'd have gotten them each one but they preferred to share it. I found out the next morning that they'd popped into the canteen when we got back for the local food that was waiting for them anyway). Two pizzas came out to 205 cedis ($17.91), practically the most expensive thing all day. Car and driver were 900 cedis ($78.62), and we tipped him an additional 50 ("we'll buy him dinner" -- I rely on Williams judgement on these matters). My pizza "meat lovers" with ham, pepperoni, beef and chicken, was good but I still find chicken doesn't go pleasingly on pizza, comes off kind of tasteless compared to the sauces, and the beef chunks were chewy as is local beef norms, which consistency didn't fit with the rest. And thus was our very busy day!

Monday, November 2nd, Day 30, Kasese, Western Uganda - In the early morning light I sped back up the highway, clinging on the back of a motorbike, back up the road we'd traveled the day before and the day before that. We passed a palace, which I'm not sure whether to describe as a "large" palace or a "small" palace, it's all a matter of perspective, but it would equal maybe the kind of impressive edifice a successful doctor in Orange County would live in, which makes it small by world palace standards but large compared to most other things in Uganda, it belonged to a local king. I'm informed at one point (the Idi Amin regime?) the monarchies were all abolished, but much more recently they decided they wanted to bring them back as a point of cultural pride or something, so they rustled up the former kinds or their descendants and re-installed them. I picture them being then engaged in mundane commonplace jobs and suddenly being informed they were being made a king.
   After about forty minutes we turned off the main road and took a dirt road up into the mountains, passing plenty of locals carrying firewood on their heads and otherwise going about life. As we wound up the foothills my driver eventually stopped over a rise and pointed out a mountain peak that had just become visible. "See that? thats Mt [my god damn notes are lost], you are very lucky to see it, it is usually shrouded in clouds!!" But there it was, crystal clear in the fresh morning air, topped with snow. Snow, at the equator. We were still within a degree of latitude of the equator, and here was snow. And then we continued up, and up...


Old bridge new bridge green bridge brown bridge...

   The day before (which was the day after we arrived) we had had some free time in the morning and then some more project site visits in the afternoon. Looking at a keen map of things to do in the area [which I took a picture of... which has been lost. I'm never going to stop complaining about this ;) ], I had noticed a hot spring nearby. Hot springs are always fun, so I was like "let's go here!" not having a better idea anyway.
   We drove up into the hills just a little bit until we came to where a local says it was (navigation in Africa generally consists of slowing down by a pedestrian and asking questions), and there it was down a steep path in the little valley full of trees. The hot spring was then full of local men and women. The women, mostly old, were all topless but found things to cover themselves with at my arrival -- which I thought was funny, local men don't matter but the mzungu.. As soon as I arrived two skinny youngish men (30ish?) started about pulling me to the hot spring and once they had me in there proceeded to immediately give me a thorough massage. Now I immediately recognized that they would expect to be paid for this but I decided just to go with it. Despite I suppose being the literal definition of pushy, they weren't actually annoying, and it wasn't even like "here my friend, let us give you a massage!" it was.. they just started doing it. And when it was over they only wanted about $5 which I gladly paid, having feared they'd want something ridiculous like $20 (which I recognize would be ridiculously cheap for a massage in the western world, again, everything is relative). Another local earnestly told me that the healing powers of the hot spring could heal "ANYTHING!" and listed a wide array of potential ailments, though I think he noted it didn't cure aids. (HIV prevalence in Uganda is like 7%, making me very afraid of anyone's bodily fluids!!)
   Later that day down in the hotel lobby with the giggly receptionists Sharon and Maggie (who I still swear I'm going to call one of these days to say hi), I had them bring in a tour operator they knew so I could plan a trip up the Rwenzori Mountains, also known as "the mountains of the moon." The guy who came wanted to talk about 7 day hikes and 4 day hikes and I think was a bit like "oh, uh" when I said I just had one day for it. And he kept talking about summitting the mountains though I kept saying look I don't care about that I just want to walk in the forest. The one day hike he finally booked me on, I'd find out later goes past two of the one-day's-hike waypoints for the multiday hikes and was basically the single most strenuous leg of the whole thing. Gee thanks.


Up in the cloud forest

   So the morning of the hike a motorbike took me up to the national park entrance, nestled in the forest by a babbling river. A park ranger checked me in, a young lady in military uniform with a sub-machinegun (the other side of the mountains is Congo...). I've always been impressed by how thoroughly women are integrated into the uniformed forces of all the African countries I've been to.
   Presently my guide showed up, a young man also that looked thoroughly a soldier, in camo with an AK-47. I believe his name was Simon or Thomas or something, I don't know, it was in my notes. He was very nice I liked him.
   And then we commenced hiking! The trail followed the streaming river for most of the first half of the 8.5 km hike (there and back, 17km total. Or maybe that was miles. It was wicked long whatever it was), and was relatively level for just the first kilometer or so... and then went up at a 30-45% angle it seemed for most of the rest of it! Now I don't exactly work out every day (or ever) but I'm pretty active and consider myself in fairly decent shape ... but soon I was having to stop and rest every ten feet on this absolutely grueling marathon climb. We passed porters bouncing down the trail. Multi day hikes have a bunch of porters to carry their food and stuff and I'd imagine as they eat through their supplies the porters start heading back one by one. They seemed cheerful and eager to get home. Later we'd pass some huge banana palm style leaves on the ground which I'm informed porters sleep under (!). Eventually we climbed out of the river valley and climbed a ridgeline. Got to the shelter where multi-day hikers end their first day. It was a nice little cabin with bunk beds, wood walls and roof. I think it would be quite pleasant to spend the night up there with a group of friends, the porters making you dinner. It would have been nice to be done then and not still have 75% of the days hiking to go!!



   My guide mentioned that we didn't have to go all the way, we could turn around any time I wanted, and I like to think he was a little surprised when I kept on going and going. Shortly after the shelter we started to get into the higher altitude "cloud forest" (we had some impressive altitude gain, I don't know, it was in my notes). I've always liked the "cloud forest" exhibits in zoos, with irrigation tubes blowing out mist among the bamboo, mention of exotic animals, it always seemed so mysterious and exciting ... AND HERE I WAS!! Several times we heard monkeys crashing through the trees but didn't see any until the very end. My guide pointed out an elephant footprint on the ground and I wondered how such a huge animal could possibly navigate these steep mountains. Saw a number of Great Blue Turaco birds and then at one point I found a pretty blue feather lying squarely in the path, which my guide informed me was also from the Great Blue Turaco. I picked it up and it's on my dresser to this day.
   By this point, though I was doing decently on any level or downhill part of the trail (we finally weren't climbing so much), even a gentle rise of a foot or two over a raised bit of the trail would make me clench my teeth as my legs burned and my feet felt like lead. Finally, FINALLY, we arrived at the crater lake that was our destination. It was quite beautiful. I took numerous pictures ........ which, I still have some on my DSLR and I'll see if any are good enough to post but remember the lense had gotten dirty, and a lot of my best pictures were from my phone I think (also my phone has a very useful panorama function which I've learned to use a lot for views that are just to expansive for a single shot)
   I had been provided with a packed lunch, which consisted of a leg of fried chicken, fries (cold of course), a banana, a box juice, and an apple. My guide didn't seem to have brought anything at all and seemed content like that, but I gave him my fries and some biscuits.



   And then it was time to head back! Going downhill, as you may know, is NOT necessarily easier! It can be really hard on your knees!! We also started to become a little concerned it would be dark by the time we got out, as we hurried back along very long journey out of the mountains. By the time we finally arrived at the park entrance, it was no longer manned and the light was in the initial stages of twilight.
   The motorbike trip back to the hotel seemed to take forever because I was so exhausted. I remember it was soon dark out and we were drivign along by headlight-light. Happened to catch Maggie just as she was getting off duty at the hotel, we'd talked earlier about going out but I couldn't even begin to conceive of it I was so exhausted. I think it took a week before my legs were no longer burning every time I walked!


The crater lake I hiked to

[Coming up next time: hippos! several different kinds of kingfishers! What people will do for 14 cents! Guess what food destroys my guts?? And going out on the town with Maggie and Sharon!]