KKKKK PALIME!!!

Time to hear about the trip to Kpalime!! We (Julie, Ben, Josh and I) had a fantastic time!  So sorry that the pictures are not in the right order.  I had a really difficult time trying to figure it out... :(

We took a taxi to the bus station and piled into a mini bus (above)

Any trip in Africa wouldn't be complete if it we didn't get stopped on the way! The police stopped our bus and we all had to pile out.  We really have no idea what was going on because it was all in French and no one spoke English.  But we took a picture to commemoration the event :)

Back on the bus! Surprisingly we weren't that cramped.

One of the first things we did (after getting a fanmilk) was to go to this church.  It was huge and beautiful.  Lots of stained glass windows.  

We wandered around the town a lot just to see what Kpalime  looked like.  Eventually we were really hot and sweaty and just wanted to sit down and eat out lunch.  So we stopped into a little restaurant and ate our lunch with soft drinks

A man came buy selling what we call 'street meat' street because you buy it on the street and meat because we have no idea what kind of meat it is.  It was really spicy but pretty good.  I think it had at least 3 different kinds of meat on the same skewer.  

At the market we bought fresh pineapple and mango for breakfast in the morning.  Josh tried to buy some fabric as well but we had a really difficult time with the language barrier.  None of us spoke French (Julie spoke the most but still rather difficult to have a conversation).

We took a Taxi up to Mt. Agou YWAM base.  

The base had one large main building.  It had lots of rooms in it and a  lovely wrap around porch.  While we were there  the sky opened up and it poured rain for about half an hour.  We sat under the porch and just watched the valley get drenched.  It was amazing.

We went hiking around the base (just to see what was there) .  We found some fruit trees and the boys found a long stick and knocked some of the fruit down.  We opened one of them up and couldn't figure out what the fruit was.

The weird fruit....any ideas?

There was also a catholic shrine.  It was pretty interesting.

In French it's called the JEM base.  Luckily we knew that before hand 

We hung around the base and played card games and other silly games when it was to dark to be outside.

The lovely main building and it's wrap around porch

During the storm the electricity was pretty dodgy.  It kept going out so we ate part of dinner by candle/flashlight.  It was really an adventure! Aimee (the lady who ran the base) made us fish and casava fries (sort of like potatoes).  It was delicious!

We went hiking and had some lovely views...sadly...the pictures don't really do them justice.

Hiking! (yes mom i really did hike)

One of the two little villages we had to go through to get to the peak of the mountain.  In this village some of the kids showed us the way.  We paid them in trail mix   On the way back down we happened to come across a woman who had lived in Ghana and had learned English.  She guided us through the town and introduced us to her entire family (and in laws) and took us to her house.  This is Africa people.  

The first village we went through.

This guy (in the tree) really wanted us to take a picture of him... i have no idea why. 

It was such a good trip! Unfortunately I can't figure out how to put these pictures in chronological order.  Sorry :(  The hike was really sweaty but really enjoyable.  The only thing that would have made it better was a lake at the top.  Oh! About the top! We got to the top and there was a security guard there who wouldn't let us through unless we bribed him.  We decided we didn't support corruption so we sat down ate our lunch and hiked back down the mountain.  Slightly disappointing to not get to see the view from the top of the mountain but well...life goes on and there were lots of views as we were hiking up.  Since we were hiking on a Sunday, all the churches in the villages we passed were going on.  We heard singing and worship for almost the entire hike.  Pretty cool!
So folks, that's our trip to Kaplime! My first and only night i've stayed off the ship.  Totally worth it.