We're back on the road again for the final four weeks of our travels. Time has passed incredibly quickly!

When we left Ejura last Tuesday we made our way to a small port town about three hours' journey away called Yeji. Here was where we were to catch a ferry down the Volta. The Lake Volta is the largest man-made lake in the world, and was dammed up to provide most of the electricity for the whole country of Ghana. It's an eerie place in some ways, with the tops of trees dead decades ago when the area flooded still poking out of the top of the water. But it's an absolutely beautiful area, dotted with small islands and surrounded by lush tropical horizons.

We arrived in the afternoon and met with Alfred and Eric, two guys who are in Senior High School and pay their way by helping tourists through the ferry process. They dropped us off in a bar with two other Obrunis, Americans Sarah and Christine and we began the wait. The boat is called the Yapei Queen, and every Wednesday morning, in the early hours, it sets off towards Akosombo, in the south, transporting goods, mainly yams. The boat is on a round trip, so it can arrive any time after 8pm until any time before midnight, ready to leave at 3am. Luckily, the two American girls were in touch with the Captain, so we settled in at the bar and watched some football while we waited.

We met with two German girls too, and all six of us were guided by Alfred and Eric to the boat, for a surprisingly stress-free boarding at about 11. The girls had all arranged to stay in cabins, but Jack and I were more up for roughing it, so we opted to sleep on the deck. We didn't rough it enough to sleep with all the traders who slept sitting upright in the canteen, eight to a table, so we stayed on the bridge deck with the crew. It was very cold the first night, and the second night we were rained on, but it was good fun, and being woken at 5am by rain meant we could sit up and watch the sky gradually lightening at 5.40.

Our days were spent lazing in the shade, we caught up with a lot of important stuff we needed to do like reading, napping, drinking beers and eating groundnut stew with rice. 40 hours after we boarded, we were dropped off at the beautiful port town, Akosombo. The hills behind the river were covered with greenery, and the higgledy piggledy houses with their colourful walls and tin roofs criss-crossed down to where the palm trees met the shore. We stayed in the next town, Atempuku. Although the stunning scenery and balmy sunsets were pretty good, probably the best thing about Atempuku was the shop where we found a carton of chocolate soy milk and, wonder of wonders, a packet of Hobnobs! We'd just each eaten a meal which Jack struggled to finish, and I couldn't even attempt to finish, at a local chop bar, but our milkshake and biccies cost the same as buying one of those meals 14 times over. It was worth it. For Hobnobs, it was so definitely worth it.

The guy we met at Tamale, Philip from America, had told us he'd been working for 6 weeks on an organic farm in the Central region. It's in a little village near a town called Twifo Praso. He told us how for six weeks he'd been the only fluent English speaker in the whole village, he'd foolishly only packed one novel, which he finished within 2 days, and the village has no electricity or running water. When we met him at Tamale he was like a clockwork talking machine wound up for six weeks and suddenly set free. We spent a very nice couple of days with him at Mole, and at one of our favourite Ashanti towns, Nkoranza. He seemed to have a bit of a culture shock entering the world of guesthouses and Western tourists - he told us how the village he was in was an hour's walk away from the town, that his main activity during the day had been weeding large fields for hours with a machete and that he'd eaten little more than fufu and drunk nothing but water for a month and a half.

Naturally, Jack and I were instantly enamoured with his description of the village he'd been staying at, so in a complete change of plans, we're now in Accra, staying at the home of Ken, who organises these projects, (WWOOF - Worldwide Workers on Organic Farms) and arranging to sign ourselves up for a week of hard labour. It actually sounds like it's going to be such an amazing way to get a different view of Ghanaian life. It's in complete contrast to Namaskar, where we were pampered with our tea and jam and running water, but I'm very very excited to live in the hospitality of a Ghanaian family and see a totally new way of life. Philip was very enthused about it, and we've also met Harji, an American guy with Sikh Indian background who has also been there (twice - he came back for more) and said it was one of only 2 things he was desperate to do again in his second visit to Ghana. We'll be back in the world of internet and Hobnob biscuits in just about a week's time, so we'll let you know how it was.

Until then - miss you all,

Holly :)