Amazing Easter Weekend!

This Easter weekend included the best two days of my life! No joke. Over the weekend we went up to Nkawkaw to camp in the mountains. There is a big Easter weekend paragliding festival on the top of the mountain. Apparently the people I went up with know the people that own the land under the TV tower, so we got to set up camp right there; next to the paragliding runway. We had the three dogs with us (Ghanaians are scared of dogs, like nothing else) so people thought we were all legit. And during this festival the chiefs came to dance and do a ceremony thing so they parked their vehicles in our territory, so when people asked where we were sleeping we pointed to our spot and people were like “ohhhh…!!” haha. But the festival was a lot of fun! The food was good and fairly priced! The DJ was playing all of my favorite Ghanaian music! By coincidence some of my fellow AFS friends were there also, so that was fun! Then Auntie Valerie and I got our tickets to paraglide; we were numbers 184 and 185. The first day of flying they took 20 people…so our luck for that didn’t look too optimistic…but we had fun watching other people jump! Everyone jumps different ways; some land on their face, so the Ghanaian crowd is fun to hear. Then that night we had some flares and stuff we set off! No one else was camping where we were so we had it all to ourselves! This one flare I set off shot out like a missile and I honestly thought I put the entire country out…but I didn’t! So the next morning, we sat next to the pilots and chatted with all of them! The people I went up with actually do crazy base jumps with the organizer of this event. So I was chatting with him and I ended up paragliding first!!! Paragliding is the most amazing thing I have ever done! It is so peaceful but exciting because we were doing turns and stuff! Then in air, we decided to do some circle trick with another paraglide, and the paraglide below us came up and the strings that attach the parachute to the person got caught in my leg and ripped their chute and cut my leg up. I was just happy that I didn’t die haha. The other paraglide had to land because it wasn’t safe, but we continued to fly! The view was amazing! Everything was so green because the real rain forest started there. The clouds were also visible and they crawled up the mountains, it was amazing. But then when we landed I was supposed to run as we land, but I think my body was in physical shock because we collided. I was mentally good, I planned on running, but my body didn’t want to haha so I just fell to the ground haha! It was such an experience though!!! Then we got driven back up the mountain! The festival was so much fun because there weren’t really any tourists, mainly just foreigners that live in Ghana but from all different countries. There were a lot of Peace Corps volunteers there. While we were watching people jump we sat next to some people originally from India, and they were chatting with us. It was all just really fun! If you ever get the chance to paraglide, do it! HAPPY EASTER!