This morning, we slept in. Waking up at the late hour of 8am. Not that it mattered, breakfast wasn’t served until then anyway, clearly catering to a primarily volunteer based crowd. We started out the morning with coffee and shared pancakes, the only downside of a remote destination is the 300% mark-up on food, meaning we have to share all our meals to keep on budget, luckily, portions are pretty big. Granted, $7 a plate may seem cheap, but when meals normally cost between $2-3, and you only want to spend $35 usd/day/person including lodging and transportation $7 is a bit much. We’ve been quite proud of our ability to stick to a moderate budget (backpackers can do it for as little as $15/day). Granted, the main reason we’re “roughing it” is so that we can afford a night at one of Ghana’s best private beach resorts later this week. Plus, it sort of becomes a competitive game of how little we can spend, subsequently resulting in a fair number of street food meals (which are delicious) for less than $1. Overall, though we’ve been pleasantly surprised on just how far our money gets us.

After breakfast we walked to the lake, which is much larger than we realized, hitting a maximum depth of 90M and rising. It was formed from a meteorite, and a US scientific team has been drilling here, though there’s no sign of them now. After a 45minute walk to the nearby village we rented bikes for an hour to ride to a few villages along the lake. By the end we were surprisingly winded and sweating from the humidity, and aside from less than functional breaks, it was a good ride, complete with children from the villages running along side us, yelling and waving.
After lunch, we spent the afternoon reading, lime and tonic in hand, and wandering down to our hotel’s private lake front. We both realized that while we’ve had a great time thus far, it hadn’t been exceptionally relaxing. The intensity of a sun we’ve nearly forgotten forced us into a relaxed submission, nearly falling asleep on our beach chairs, arms draped across our eyes shielding them from the intense sun. The lake water, which we tentatively waded into proved disturbingly warm, being far too used to the cold waters of the Pacific or Lake Tahoe. We spent a few hours doing nothing in particular, watching fishermen paddle with their hands across the lake on padwas. They believe that the lake is sacred, so they don’t allow regular fishing boats, padwas are essentially long flat pieces of wood you straddle, dangling your feet in the water and placing a basket in front of you for collecting fish. Though aside from the fishermen, the lake didn’t feel distinctly as if it were in Africa, tall coconut trees lined the beach, against a lush light green hillside that extended around the lake, flickering with lights from other villages. The bright sun washed out the horizon, making the strangely still water extend seemingly, indefinitely until clouds covered the sun dispelling the illusion; it felt a bit surreal.
Though a short stay, it was the perfect amount of time to see the lake, without getting bored. Tomorrow we head to The Green Turtle Lodge (the destination known to make travelers cancel future plans), on the coast south of Basua, again, very remote. Though remote so far has proved the most rewarding.