Our hike on Pride Rock! (aka Mount Adaklu)

With only two months left in Ghana, we thought it would be good to go on a weekend vacation to the most wonderful refuge we've found yet; Sky Plus Hotel.  It's our favorite place to relax and recharge when things get crazy at the house. The hotel sits on a summit where it overlooks the entire city of Ho and has a great view of this mountain that strikingly resembles Pride Rock from "The Lion King!

We've spent many an evening admiring this huge mountain, so when we found out it was hike-able, the obvious response was to schedule a trip! The mountain is actually called "Mount Adaklu" and is one of the tallest mountains in Ghana.

This past weekend was our scheduled hike. Unfortunately, Landon was still recovering from malaria at the time, so he wasn't feeling his best, but nothing would stop him from hiking. He tends to be a rather stubborn patient ;) We drove to a little town called Helekpe where we were told that our guide "had gone out, and is coming right now." We've been in Ghana long enough to realize that this means "I have no idea where he is or when he's coming back." So, this little boy named Evons (he couldn't have been older than 10!) agreed to take us halfway up the mountain. It was such a beautiful area! 

Evons and I

We then arrived at this small village where we met our second guide, Christian. We began our long and very tiring hike up the mountain. It took us two and a half hours to reach the top! The scenery was absolutely beautiful the whole way up, but the trail was rugged and quite dangerous at times! We came to a very steep rockface that had a knotted rope secured to the top. Christian quickly climbed it and yelled down his advice, "do not delay, there are many black ants on the rock!" Sure enough, there were swarms of them! We scrambled up the rope as quickly as possible, but we did not escape the wrath of the black ants. I didn't realize how much those bites hurt! Anyways, we made it up two or three of these crazy make shift rock-climbing obstacles, (dodging black ants all the way) and then we arrived at a resting place. Whew. We were exhausted by this point and  asked Christian how much farther we had until the top. Two hours, he said. We had already been hiking/climbing for two hours-we really didn't think we could make it another two. Thankfully we've also learned by now that most Ghanaians don't estimate time well. So after a good long rest, we decided to continue. 

Doesn't this look like it could be straight out of the Lion King?!

Purple mushrooms! This one's for you Parker :)

Upon seeing this pictures, Mercy said, "these creatures
will go inside your nose when you are sleeping and kill you!"
Yikes! I hope to never see one again!

After another 45 minutes of hiking/rock-climbing, we made it to the top! And it was well worth the difficult hike! The view was amazing, and there were monkeys chattering in the trees! Landon caught a glimpse of them, but they stayed pretty well hidden.

Climbing down these rocks was so scary!
It's kind of like rappelling...but without the harness!

We saw so many beautiful butterflies!

We did it!

Who knew chacos could be used to rock climb?!
Both of our guides put us to shame in their worn out
flip flops!

We went back to Sky Plus feeling accomplished, muddy, and so hungry. Pizza and hot showers never sounded so good!