Ants in my Pants, or Hiking Means Mountain Climbing in Ghana

It has been an up and down two days. I will start with the up since that is more fun and also sequential. My house was being painted, school had not started, I had gotten back from a visit to Ho, and it was only Wednesday. So I spent Thursday visiting my new house, looking much brighter with the colors, but also realizing I may have bitten off more than I should have totally fixing up an empty house in a place where I am still learning where to buy peanut butter, but more on that later.

So I decided to do a mini trip to my first tourist destination, Agumatsa Falls in Wli (pronounced phonetically, Vli or Bli) I stayed at the Water Fall lodge with a sign reading “Let the German couple welcome you” It was a very nice little hotel owned by a German couple with several groups of German tourists staying in rooms or camping on the grounds. I have been asked a few times if I am German so I wonder if Germans are more common visitors here than other countries? I got there early, after my first actual difficulty navigating the transportation system trying to transfer in Hohoe to Wli. Maybe because there is a tourist attraction there is more of the scamming scene which I have really not found in my area. After wandering around, going to the wrong tro-tro stop a nice man took pity on my and found me a taxi for the real amount of 2 Cedis, not the 20 they were trying to sell me on when I got there.

Lower falls

So back to the falls, the hotel was just a short walk to the visitor center where I paid my entrance fee which included a guide. There is an upper and lower falls. The lower falls is maybe a 15-20 minute flat walk to the bottom of the 800m high falls. The upper falls takes you about halfway up where the falls hit a midpoint and have carved out a little beach before continuing down the lower falls. There was a bit of arguing among the guys hanging around the visitors center, finally a middle aged, very small man, Matthew was introduced to be my guide. A short way down the trail he said because I was doing the upper and I was a single person none of the other guides wanted to take me, instead waiting for the bigger school groups. “Well,” I thought, “I will show them, I am going to be fast and I am going to give him a big tip so that they are sorry for not wanting to hike with me.”

Onwards along the trail Matthew looked down and said “Jump over the ants!” because there was a thick smarm of red ants crossing in a line across the path. One more step and he yelled “Run, run, fast, fast!” and we were sprinting down the path that was covered with mounds and rivers of red ants. As we completed our ant-sprint at a bridge he instructed “Stamp, stamp!” as he was shacking and stamping his feet on the ground. As I followed suit, disaster averted. Matthew ominously finished with “I never liked those ants, they bite.” So about 5 minutes later I feel s sting under my pants, around my calf, hitting myself to kill the ant and stop the stinging we stop and investigate looks clear. A few more minutes pass I felt a bite on my ankle, stop again and find a big red ant under the tongue of my shoe. Ok, good to go. A few minutes later there is a sharp sting on my inner, mid-thigh followed closely by a sting way to close to a delicate area for comfort. So here I am, alone in the middle of the jungle except with Matthew, jumping around, swatting my thighs, hips, and inevitably my crotch as I try to dislodge/kill/something to this ant. In hindsight I should have just stepped behind a tree and taken off my pants but if a biting jungle ant is heading up the leg I was not exactly thinking logically. So finally, after hitting myself from waist to knees, I am set. Off we go on our hike but for about ten minutes after that I have little phantom stings, swearing that the ants are just biding their time, waiting for my complacency or when I am incapacitated trying to haul myself up the trail. And when I say haul, I mean haul, not hike. About 20 minutes into the uphill portion as we head up and around the face of this mountain, the path is very rocks and narrow and uphill but fine. Then we hit the “hike”.

Spoiler alert, I did make it back down.

So backtracking a bit, before I went everyone was trying to sell me water, saying to get to the top you must hike, the hike is long; take lots of water, etc. I thought I was ok but got one more bottle just in case. While we were walking to the lower falls and dodging ants, Matthew was walking fast but kept assuring me “Once we start hiking, we will slow down” I was like, “hmm, haven't we already been hiking for 20 minutes?” So really, when they say “hike” they mean “mountain climb” about every 4-6 paces there was a rock, root or something that forced me to step up higher than my knee, often mid-thigh height. Sometimes this was continuous for a several meter stretch of climb. So it was basically 1.5 hours on an uneven stair climb where the stairs were much taller than normal and often having to yank ourselves up on nearby trees and vines. When the visitor center staff below said it would take 2 hours up, 2 hours down, I assumed this was a cushioned figure, you know, for slow, picture taking, out of shape tourists. Nope, event the super-fit French couple I passed then talked to later thought it was really hard. SO huffing, puffing, taking breaks, but refusing to show that I was tired to not give single, female clients a bad name I made it to the top. It was worth it, totally amazing. It was very cold with the wind and mist coming of the spring-fed falls, the never-try trees surrounding the little round beach covered in thick, shiny moss. I sat on a rock, drank almost the rest of my water (they were right about needing more) eating my biscuits and enjoying the scene. Slipping, sliding, scooting my way down to see the much more visited lower falls where I dunked my very, very sweating head into the water and called it a successful “hike”

The steep hike

As we returned on the flat path to the trailhead Matthew asked if I was tired, I said a little. Was he tired? “No, this is not tired for me” This man, maybe 5'6”, 120 pounds, starting the hike with a cigarette, drank only one small bag of water, and did the whole thing in cheap plastic flip flops. Pretty amazing. I never know what to tip people, so I gave him what I have been spending for about two days of living expenses. Hopefully that was enough to make it worth his very patient, 4 hours with me.

My guide Matthew