On the way home. Blargh. We took off about a half hour ago - flying time is 10.5 hours, so Amy and I figure we'll be landing around 12.30. Figures that Ghana Air doesn't have a skyphone sort of thing - Jon could maybe make a 12.30 arrival. :-p

Anyway - left off on Wednesday morning. We were on the bus and gone by 6.30am - repacked and fed and not too well-rested, but willing, for the most part, to sleep on the bus. We got to the monkey sanctuary promptly at eight and walked back through the village to the forest that surrounds it, because the monkeys had just retreated into the trees. A couple minutes in and we saw some - jumping treetops, way up high. I took some pictures and videos of monkey-shaped dots, but they never came any closer.

On the way out, Dee talked to a rather friendly baby goat. Also preserved for antiquity. ;-)

Back onto the bus to go to Hohoe, the site of a traditional medicine research facility. It was a combination of circumstances - sitting, heat, lack of sleep - that made us all so tired. It was quite interesting, but soooo tired.

It's intriguing how little pretense there is about product presentation in Ghana. I don't think it's just a matter of not having the cash to afford a nice display - nobody cares. Gorgeous carved doors on the side of the road, internet cafes in shacks, fabric tossed unceremoniously into a garage - no money sunk into racks or mannequins or static-stick lettering. It's refreshing, really - a bit exhaustive and shocking at first, but refreshing.

Mmm... airplane sleep. Uncomfortable, unsatisfying, but just enough to keep you alive.

Sooo medicine. Enough medicine. Waterfall!

Back onto the bus we went to drive to Wli, a village at the foot of the mountain range that forms the Ghana-Togo border. The country's highest waterfall is a 40-minute walk through rainforest, so we had a lunch prepacked by the hotel, then set off into the woods.

To call it a real "hike" is a bit of an exaggeration - more along the lines of a brisk jaunt between some really tall trees. I walked up with Kate and Ekow, then with Christina and Dee. Two corrals masquerading as urinals came into sight, and the path turned to the left - and suddenly, there it was.

Breathtaking. Absofuckinglutely breathtaking. The falls were too high to fit into my viewfinder, and the banks all around were lush and covered in flowers and spray. It was storybook, daydream, mirage - all beneath and around and above us.

Upon being informed by Kofi that the region had tested clear for river blindness, David promptly shed all but his boxers and went in. The Justin and Rob and Callie and Jessica, then Kate, then Alex, then Hannah, and finally, after a run to the 'bathroom', me.

It was headachey, cold, rocks and mud underfoot. The pond at the falls' foot wasn't deep, and we could wade all the way back. And so, we did. Stood under the water, against the rock, felt tiny and humbled and placed. Callie sat in a crook on the rear wall; other people perched on the left face. I just stood in awe.

So it was that my two outstanding sensuous memories of Ghana came to be water-based - the ocean sunset in Elmina, and the moments that I navigated, rendered almost blind, to the rock behind Wli.

Trivial little things like soaking underwear and wet pants crotches were just that - trivial. We dried almost completely on the walk back down (I t00bed with lil' Carolyn the whole time), and we boarded the bus feeling, I think, that our travels in the Volta region were worth the hassle. We drove back to Accra and got to the Crystal Palm around eight. Dinner, then I unintentionally fell asleep - for ten hours.

We had Thursday morning free, but almost everyone went to the craft market in Accra. I got a cab with Sarah and Hannah, and we found ourselves a half hour later not at the tourist mart, but the real-people-who-live-in-Accra mart. Was cool enough, but between the being short on time and the almost getting hit by a train (the Accra central market is located amidst a web of train tracks, some active, some not), we found our way out and wandered.

After maybe ten minutes, we were stopped by a man named John (I think), who ended up guiding us the rest of the morning. He paid for our cab to the craft center, then bought us coconuts that had been lopped open to drink. (...interesting.) We ran into a friend of his, Andy, who came with us too, and who apparently took a shine to me, as he proposed moments after learning my name. ("I don't know what my boyfriend would think of me marrying someone else, Andy.") As it was, he did my bargaining for me, so I recouped my overspending in the craft villages - a thinker carving for Byron (¢25K), a water carrier for me (¢45K), a mask for James (¢25K), a stack of postcards and notecards (¢60K), and a cowry necklace/anklet set and two bangles for (respectively) me, Suzi, Pavy, and Lauren (¢70K together). On the way out, I also picked up 20 ¢550 stamps - it costs ¢1000 (twelve cents!) to send a postcard anywhere in the world from Ghana. I split a cab back with David, Carolyn B, and Jessica; we discussed our random and varied observations on the way, and I almost wet myself over the Ghanaian pop version of "If I Were a Rich Man" (especially as Judaism seems to be almost nonexistent in Ghana).

Once we were back, I finished the suitcase packing I'd started that morning - we were headed to the airport at two to get boarding passes and check backs - with the new regulations for inspections, they need almost a day's lead time to check everything. The airport took forever, but no (figurative) sweat off my back (although there was no A/C, of course) - I spent the whole time writing my ten postcards. It really cracks me up how just bad Ghanaian postcards are - cheesy and high contrast and it's a really good thing I loff those, or I'd've been screwedified, bigtime.

Upon getting my boarding pass, I discovered that not only were we all seated together in a block, but that I had 11G - most assuredly not a bitch seat and, better, a middle aisle. An aisle! Finally!!11!111

Back once again to the hotel, where I showered and changed for dinner, which was at the house of the Sunseekers director, Kwame, with the MLK kids. Sexy black sweater and more makeup than I'd worn cumulatively on the trip at that point. I sat with Jessica and Christina and Justin and Natalia and lil' Carolyn, and next to a table that kept dumping their soda on Gilda (much to our amusement :-p). There was a performance during the meal - drumming and dancing and acrobatics, including the breathing and eating of fire, and the placement of it near genitals. (Eep!) And I recorded solid proof that Gallatin kids can't dance, and got most of Dee and Fran's thank-you speeches (and much singing, because we're all nuts :-)).

Back on bus, back to hotel. Change of shoes, then walked to the karaoke bar two blocks up to celebrate Carolyn B's 21st-birthday-in-a-country-with-no-drinking-age. It was cheap and fun enough (especially Sarah's priceless rendition of "Respect"), but I left with CB and Jessica at 1.30 to answer the call of the swimming pool. Did that, changed, called Jon, learned of the June 21st Book 5 release date [insert cheering here], and, having finished my carry-on packing (two bags this time, instead of one), went to breakfast - where I finally came to terms with the fact that I had not, in fact, outrun the need for Cipro. *sigh* Breakfast (one last meal with a bazillion pieces of toast), and we loaded into the bus one last time. Our goodbyes with Kofi and Ekow and Solomon took ages, but eventually we were in the airport, past the reservation desk, through customs, past security (where the guy looked away from my scissors-laden bags), at the waiting area, on the tarmack, up the stairs, in the plane.

I adore the fact that we have to walk outdoors to the plane - it's shades of movie star and Indiana Jones and presidency. And, of course, engines? Yeah - podracer jets. Big time, yo.

And now, here I am. 11.23am GMT, visibly over water, in 11G, which remains an aisle seat even though this is a different model plane than we came in. One meal and almost half a flight down. Almost everyone is asleep, although people are beginning to wake up. I'm slowly believing that our time in Ghana, our fantastic, splendiferous, unforgettable time in Ghana, is over, that I'm back to the poor quasi-college unemployed/homeless thing, that the remaining several hundred thousand cedis and a few hundred dollars in bank accounts is all I have, that I have problems with schoolwork and responsibility and initiative.

And that I've had what is commonly termed "the time of my life" with people I adore, and that I'll remember this trip after the sunburn fades to tan fades to February, after the CDs are obsolete, after this paper disintegrates.

Forever.