Hi all!

Uploading photos has been quite difficult on the road.  Which is why I just took advantage of the Peace Corps bureau in Niamey (capital of Niger) and spent about four hours getting them uploaded!  There are about 150 in the album to your right, but I know that many of you won't have the energy or time to look through them all!  So, here are some highlights from the trip so far...

 Peter and I in Ghana's Kakum Rainforest, on one of seven rope bridges suspended 80 meters above the forest floor.

 a plaque inside of Cape Coast Castle, one of the first slave trading posts.  Probably one of the most horrifying and sobering places I've seen.

fishermen at work in Cape Coast, Ghana.  The chaos of the scene doesn't quite come through in a photo.

 atop Mt. Afadjato, Ghana's tallest peak at a precarious 2900 ft!

at Wli (pronounced Vlee) Falls in beautiful eastern Ghana.  I got bit by ants on the 45 minute walk to the falls; if you are ever on this path and you want to stop and take a photo, make sure you don't stop in the middle of an ant colony.  At least, not an ant colony where each ant is a half inch long and posesses blood-inducing pinchers.

 creativity at its finest.  A bamboo AK47.  Near Wli Falls, Ghana.

 beautiful biodiversity in Togo's cocoa and coffee bean region.

natural, brilliant pigment used in paintings and cloth dyeing, eastern Togo. 

...and for some reason, the computer decided to stop letting me upload photos to this blog entry.  So I guess that'll have to be it for now; more to come though!  As I said, we are in Niger now and very much enjoying our time here.  Niamey is so laid back and chill; very different from most west African cities.  I don't even have to haggle prices with taxi drivers here!  Granted, the heat here is pretty intense, but that's something I've been used to for the last two+ years so I think I can get used to it again.  We applied for our Mali visas today, should be picking them up tomorrow.  Why are we getting our Mali visas?  Because we are going here.  Pretty cool eh?  It'll take a six day boat trip up the Niger River in very uncomfortable conditions, but it should be a beautiful journey...and bragging rights in the end hehe.

Like I said, hopefully more photos from my trip will be up soon.  Until then, alla hokki jam.

Comments

[Andrea]

Glad to see some of your pictures and hear more about your adventures! I'm getting very excited to see you. After all these magical places you're going, DC will seem a bit dull I think. Oh well, I'll just feed you lots of yummy food and you'll forget about that.