Elephants Up-Close and Personal

Today we went to Mole National Park to see the elephants at the watering hole. We drove through the park and saw all kinds of wildlife: elephants, bush buck (antelope), bush pig (warthog), guinea fowl, monkeys (lots, and lots of monkeys) and of course… elephants!!! On this excursion, we stopped near a village of sorts where the national park workers lived. Here, I saw quite an amazing site. There was two children crouched down on the ground, with 8 scooped out holes with little rocks in them, playing a game similar to mancala. While to most people this may not mean anything, back in the day when I was working daycare, I used to play that game with all the kids. Seeing this was just some evidence that even halfway across the world, we are all at the core the same.
We had breakfast overlooking the watering hole - once again toast and coffee - my staple. Afterwards, we went to the lookout point to watch all the elephants (only two that day) to jump into the water. Once the elephants got into the water, all the yogis on the trip started doing some yoga. The best part about this… watching Ringo join in.
From here we went traveled to Kumasi (the economic capital of the country). On the way there, we stopped at the oldest discovered mosque in western Africa. It was discovered in 1420 - so the guy that found it named it that (in whichever local language is there) so that it would be remembered as such. Also along the drive, we drove through the Abofour rainforest. As we drove further south into Kumasi, we heading into the Ashanti region of the country, and to the “wetter” part of the country (that is… the north is crazy dry, and of course, to have the rainforest…it rains a bit more in the south than in the north).
At Kumasi, we stayed at one of the nicest hotels yet. We were there for a night, and enjoyed dinner there. We received our outfits earlier that day, so we all tried them on… but we waited to wear them until the last day. I absolutely love mine! After all the traveling, I crashed hard that night.

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