Sometimes you find yourself in...: Weekend in Kpalime -- Feb 20/21st

Kpalime (pronounced 'paulimay') is a town about 2.5 hrs north of Lome where a group of 17 'Mercy Shippers' went for a weekend getaway off the ship. The area of Kpalime is very beautiful and lush. It was so nice to get off the ship, out of the city to a rural area of Africa to experience part of the African culture.

Saturday morning we got a taxi van to drive us out to Kpalime. Since the van did not have air conditioning we were ready for a swim in the pool at the hotel when we arrived. The hotel we stayed at cost only 4000CFA ($8 USD) a person. Although we had to sleep 4 to a room, 2 of us on mattresses on the floor, our room was good, the other girls room had cockroaches so they ended up sleeping 4 on 2 single beds :) We took 'zemi jons' (motorbike taxi's) to a beautiful waterfall! After some of us took the zemi jon taxi's for a ride up a mountain. It was a hoot, even though my zemi broke down, which did not really surprise me as that seems to be a usual occurance here in Africa. The driver attempted fixing it with no luck...so here I was on a mountain in the middle of Togo with my transportation broke down and my group ahead of me, and not knowing any Ewe (a local tribal language they spoke) or French. Somehow, someway they make things work, so the next zemi that came along, the driver stopped, spoke with my driver, unloaded his passenger and took me up to meet the group.

Sunday we hiked the highest mountain in Togo - Mount Agou. It was a beautiful hike, probably not the easiest, but record breaking for the one most sweat on. Not an inch of us, including our clothing was dry. I didn't know that the back of my fingers had sweat pores, but yeah, found out they do. It was a beautiful hike. Our guide Noel, painted us with different colors from leaves, ferns, showed us cocoa, papaya's, banana, pineapple. We hiked through a few local villages and got to see community life, church, etc. It was beautiful!!!