Ferrying Into The Heartland Of Ghana On The World’s Largest Man-Made Lake
Steaming up gargantuan Lake Volta in the dark of night, I gazed at a heaven full of stars above, an occasional cluster of lights along the shoreline marking a village — and, here and there, radiant-red, flaring hot spots that appeared to be raging fires. As I puzzled over the blazing anomaly, Captain Eugene walked up, leaned on the ferry rail next to me and, as if reading my mind, offered an explanation: “Men set fires to drive the animals out of the bush to shoot or trap them for their meat. They burn large areas and destroy habitat for money. It’s a big problem.”
I was taking Ghana’s grand ferry journey, a 30-hour odyssey on the MV Yapei Queen traversing the length of the world’s largest man-made lake. And it would be full of surprises.
Departing more than three hours late, the sun had had already sunk below the horizon and an ebony outline of the shore was our only vista. It would be a long night of slowly cruising up this outsized…
Categories: The Expeditioner