Road Trip! Destination: Ganta

In a crazy coincidence of time and place, my friend Tim, who was a Peace Corps Volunteer with me in Azerbaijan, was working here in Liberia this summer and our trips happened to overlap for a couple of days!  Since it was the end of his trip and the start of mine, it seemed like the perfect time for both of us to take a small vacation upcountry, and so Saturday morning we met up and set off for Ganta in Nimba County!

After a short 4 ½ hour drive squeezed like sardines into the backseat of a shared taxi with a rather large woman, a little boy, and a man, we arrived in Ganta!  When I lived here before many of my friends were stationed in Nimba County and raved about Ganta so it has been a place I’ve wanted to visit for a long time.  While the list of “attractions” a current Peace Corps Volunteer gave me of things to do in Ganta didn’t seem stellar (“Well you can visit the leper colony where they make baskets and crafts… and the TB clinic is close by… oh and the hospital is pretty cool…” – all this after declaring he believed Ganta to be the best site in all of Peace Corps…I’m not saying it’s not, but those things didn’t immediately sell it to me!),
 ), we were able to enjoy ourselves and stay away from places that might make us very sick!  We hit the local hot spots – Ganta has a number of restaurants that serve more-American-style food and it even has two “beer gardens” that are more like patios than gardens, but I’m not complaining!  We also took a motorbike ride down to the St. John River, which was probably nicer for the motorbike ride to get there than for the river itself (not that there was anything wrong with the river, just that driving through the outskirts of town to get there was pretty neat – Tim took a video on our ride back and I’ll try to get it).  Besides the river trip, we sort of walked around to get a sense of the town as well.

On the bank of the St. John River

Quick shot during our motorbike ride

View from the "beer garden"

As I write this I feel as though I’m painting Ganta as a pretty lame destination for our weekend away, but really it was so nice for me to get back upcountry.  Monrovia is a fine place, I love where I’m staying and I’m very happy to be here, but let’s be real – going upcountry is so much more comfortable for me.  I felt much more at home getting back to a place that reminded me a lot of Voinjama (my previous site) and I can’t wait to visit there in about two weeks!

The second day of our trip we woke up pretty early and drove about an hour back to Gbarnga.  This is the city where the road splits to go into Lofa County (where Voinjama is) and Nimba County (where we had just been), so it is a place I was familiar with at least from passing through several times.  We didn’t stick around much in the city (the Peace Corps Volunteers I spoke to really didn’t have much to say about Gbarnga at all) but instead hired a taxi to take us to the nearby Kpatawee waterfalls which Tim had heard about from another Peace Corps Volunteer.  Great decision!  Since it is rainy season, there was a ton of water flowing over this huge, tiered waterfall - although according to the caretakers of the site 2 days before the water was even stronger!  But then we wouldn’t have been able to hop out to a rock outcropping in the water to get a frontal view of the falls so I think we came at the perfect time :)

Rice fields fed by the water of Kpatawee Falls.  There was an impassable part of the road so we had to get out and walk from here.

A partial view of the falls - I didn't bring my camera out to the rock outcropping because I knew I'd end up dropping it in the water - and I did end up slipping in up to my thigh so I think I was right!

After we finished at the falls we caught another shared taxi (and paid for an extra spot in the back so that we would only be 3 people there) to go back to Monrovia.  Even though we were only gone for one night, it was really nice to get out of the city!  Can’t wait for another weekend trip upcountry!