Don't Look Down

VACA!
My friends and I went on a mini-vacation this past weekend to Green Turtle Lodge. To get there you have to take two trotros (15 person vans that could fall apart at any minute in which 20+ people are squished into). In our first trotro, two Ghanaian men got to asking us if we were married (as usual) and if I had children. (Most of us wear fake wedding rings around). He believed that I was married but he didn't believe that I didn't have children, i'm not sure why. Then I was asked what color baby I want to have at which point I pretended to fall asleep.

THE INFAMOUS TROTRO
About an hour into the ride we began to pass through a funeral celebration. In Ghana, death is celebrated in consideration of a person's life and accomplishments. Aka hundreds of people gather in the street to get drunk and dance in their black and red traditional clothing. However, this funeral had a particularly large amount of people in attendance and so the road was essentially blocked for our trotro to pass. All of a sudden people from the crowd started climbing on our trotro and yelling at us. People grabbed at our arms and legs through the windows. If you have ever seen Dawn of The Dead, it was exactly like the scene where all the zombies climb on top of the van. It got a bit scary, but in true Ghanaian fashion, the driver pretended as if nothing was out of the ordinary and very slowly drove through the crowd. We were later told the a trotro driver had died and the funeral goers were mad at our trotro driver for not attending the funeral.
Then we had to pay.

GREEN TURTLE LODGE
The lodge was founded by an English couple who wanted to create a hotel based on eco-tourism. The toilets were completely self-composting which was cool... I know you'd be curious, but don't look down the hole. Ever. It moves.
Sea turtles are endangered in the area so the owners of the lodge pay fisherman to release any that they catch. Also, the lodge employs many people from the local town and pays children to take tourists on canoe rides through the swamps. We woke up at 530 one morning and went on the canoe ride which was really nice. The hotel even provided mosquito nets for our matresses on the beach! (let it be noted that while the intention was there, the mosquito nets were widely ineffective). Another plus was the amazing food. They actually made chocolate covered bananas. I was in heaven. Since it is a tourist spot, there were lots of foreigners and it was reallly weird to be surrounded by white people. Regardless, it was a nice break from Cape Coast which doesn't have many activities to do.