Saturday Feb 7

 

            Happy Birthday, Hugh! Clickety click.

            I had a great run this morning with no pain.  I added a bit to make up for not doing the Apres hill and did about an 8 Km jog and 1.5 Km cool down.  I even included a short short run and got my heart rate up to 90%.

            After breakfast we took the Pastor’s 3 children with us to Lake Bosamtwi. They charged us $5 to get down to the lake, but when we got there it really was lovely.  We looked at the tickets and admittance was posted as $.20, which would have been $1 for all 5 of us instead of $1 each.  The foreigner pays much more that the native Ghanaians do I think.  We were told the toll is to go toward widening the road down to the lake.  And it sure needs it.  It is a narrow paved road switchbacking its way down.  And half way down there are large cement barriers in the middle of the right hand lane forcing all traffic to be one lane through that area.  No warning signs, not painted or even reflective buttons on them, just dull gray cement coming up suddenly.

            When we got to the lake the girl at the change rooms wanted another $1 each to change but there was a free change room out the back and that was good enough for us.  The guide said that fee was supposed to be $.10.  Fred thought they were being too greedy so they got nothing because that would have been an average days wages for us to change our clothes.

            The lake is a large round crater lake with no natural river going in or out.  It relies on rain water to keep it filled.  It was very warm at the edge and had a nice sandy bottom.  The 2 older children really enjoyed it but the young 5 year old boy was nervous about the water and stayed very close to the shore.  Eventually he got out of the lake and played with a group of boys playing on the path to the village.  Swimming made everyone hungry and we bought rice, stew (spicy sauce), boiled eggs, fried chicken, bananas and ground nuts from the village on our way home.   Both the little ones fell asleep in the back seat on the way home so I think we played them out.  All in all a very successful trip.  Pastor was thrilled to see the pictures of his children playing in the lake and Fred transferred them onto his computer for him.

            Traveling each way took about an hour so we were very surprised when the GPS told us that the return trip was only about 15 miles. Getting out of the city is a nightmare for traffic and each small village on the way is crowed with taxies and TroTro’s (van buses) and the road is full of large pot holes.  So everywhere you want to go takes a long time.