Mole National Park

I Guess It Rains Down in Africa

After arriving late to Mole, I check in, crank up the AC and scope the scene. The hotel is in a spectacular location, overlooking the savannah and elephant ponds in the valley below. Very, very beautiful and spectacular. I dine poolside, gazing at the awesome expanse before me. After dinner, I wander over to the staff canteen to find a crowd gathered around a television, watching a soccer game, and I suddenly feel like I am in some FIFA promo about how soccer unites us all as the screen glows in the dwindling twilight of the African outback, while the men argue about the game in a tribal language. As darkness falls a spectacular lightning show rises. Every second or so the distant sky lights up. This goes on for two hours, until finally the deluge arrives. The lightning lights up the valley below me, and a deluge of water pours forth. I sit for another two hours mesmerized and in awe.

Elephants, man.

So today is the big day. Will I see elephants on my safari walk? I wake up at 6:30, thinking I had missed it and cursing myself. I calmed down after being assured that the walk did not begin until 7am. Sigh of relief I arrive at the meeting place to find two very stiff and angry German women complaining because they thought that the tour was to begin at 6:30 am. After some arguing, they did not join the tour because it started late. I could not believe it. People like this will not be very happy in Ghana. Anyway, they missed a great tour, despite the mud from the downpour of the previous night. Elephants, antelope and African boar were present in multitude, and I did say hi for you, Cayelle.

Ketchup? Hmmmm, that does sound good!

So, I'm sitting on the patio/perch overlooking the elephant pond, when a voice behind me yells down to us “hey, guys!” I turn from around and not five feet away a male baboon strolls by and climbs a tree, just to my right. I begin snapping pictures. After a couple of minutes another voice says “turn around”. It is a mother and baby baboon. The mother then moves with baby on back towards the pool area, where a few people were enjoying lunch. Toufic leans into me and says “you watch, the mother is going to take the ketchup, or she is going to try and do something with the food. She will scare them and take something”. He then recounts to me a story of his school days and how a baboon once ripped up his school books. Laughing my head off, I realise this is the African version of “the dog ate my homework”, though it is not so funny when you don't have the money to replace the schoolbooks It took about five minutes, and I actually thought Mom was gone so I went back to snapping Dad sitting in the nearby tree. Suddenly, a great kerfuffle poolside. I looked over to see three young ladies fleeing their lunch and Mom perched on the table with baby on back. She grabs the ketchup and and races into the woods, where she will smash the bottle on a rock and feed herself, baby and I'm sure Dad found his way there, as he disappeared shortly after the ketchup did. They totally played us and it was awesome . “Yeah, they're tricky bastards”, Toufic confided, and I sensed he was still holding a grudge from his long ago destroyed schoolbooks.

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