It’s a long way to Kintampo. From the State Transport Company (STC) office near Circle in Accra, we waded through the morning traffic and took the northbound spoke, heading away from the city. Our first break was about two hours later at the Linda Dor rest stop, where the same GHC 1,000 can buy you a piss in a fetid urinal or a tasty fresh orange.

Another four hours and we were at the STC depot in Kumasi. Fifteen minutes’ stop to stretch and use the facilities and we were on the road again. But this time we didn’t make it more than 200 meters before the attendant stood up in the aisle and announced, “There has been a small fault with the clutch. We will return to the yard to have it fixed very well. We are sorry for the delay.” Stepping off into the midday heat at the depot I was sure it would be at least an hour. Imagine my surprise when we the big powder-blue bus lumbered out of the service hangar just 15 minutes later. We were back on and moving in no time.

Four hours later it was beginning to get dark as we turned into the Mandatory STC stop in Kintampo. A few minutes after I stepped off, a lone white face walked in among the myriad sellers of mango and pure water and bread and phone cards in that dusty lot. It was Pamela.

We bought bananas and a loaf of bread and walked up a hill along a paved street gouged with deep potholes. There were more potholes than street. It looked like someone had taken a giant mellon-baller to the road and stopped when he couldn’t get any more good chunks. At either side of the road was a canyon etched deep and smooth into the red clay by the rushing water of northern rainy seasons. In some places it was five feet deep. All along the length were rickety plank bridges leading to the houses on each side of the street. Goats and sheep in a variety of sizes and colors crossed our path.

Reaching the crest of the hill we came to the campus of the Health Research Center, a pleasant collection of one- and two-story buildings sprawled across grassy fields. One of these is a big, square two-story affair surrounding a large courtyard (more than 100’ square). The courtyard is bounded by two levels of railed walkways. When we walked in, these were draped most of the way around with laundry. The place was bustling with people talking and playing portable radios. Young girls floated through, making circuits of the perimeter balancing wide, shallow plastic basins on their heads. They were selling pure water sachets.

In Accra water sellers say: “Jahhhs pyi’awtahh.” (“Just pure water.”)

In Kintampo they say: “Pee-yooo waytahh.” (“Pure water.”)

Pamela had already bought pure water, though, so we didn’t take any. She had also bought beautiful red/green mangoes—for GHC 2,000 ($0.20) each!—which she cut expertly with a small machete she bought in town.

The next morning we assembled a lunch of fresh oranges, boiled groundnuts, and groundnut paste, honey, and banana sandwiches (local PBJ?) and made for the falls. Kintampo is the district capital of the Kintampo North district of the Brong Ahafo region. They’re not just handing out those district seats, either. The Kintampo falls, a few short kilometers up the road, are known throughout the country. When I mentioned to people at work that I was planning to visit the city, almost all of them advised me that the falls are a must. (Strangely, none of them had ever seen them before. “What would I be doing in Kintampo?” they asked.)

The falls have three stages. The first, farthest upstream, is a big overhanging rock shelf. Water flows over the lip and falls about ten feet, then disappears underneath a garden of large smooth boulders. The water seems to have been swallowed whole by the ground, but it emerges about 20 meters downstream, coursing up from its underground tunnel.

It’s a short walk to stage two, an extremely modest rapid whose report is an easy conversation of gurgles and slurps. Continuing downstream on a path parallel to the water, one reaches the top of a meandering cement stairway. From the ground 152 steps below, stage three of the falls announces itself with a healthy roar as a big rock shelf with a coat of slippery, shaggy black fur breaks the river’s sixty-foot dive. There was nobody else there.

We climbed up the shelf and sat right under the falling water. It was a hard, beating force on my shoulders and the top of my head. I had a laughing fit and I’m not sure why. That water, it just kept pounding down and I sat there soaked dead through, imagining how incredibly wet I was getting, and it seemed like the funniest thing. It’s a long time since I had a laughing fit like that.

Pamela slid down the furry shelf to the pool below and I scooted down in an awkward crab walk. The water was cool but not cold. Near one edge of the pool there was a rock with a perfectly flat rectangular face that sat like a tabletop a foot out of the water. We each did a sun salutation, then dried off and walked back up the 152 stairs to our taxi, waiting at the entrance to the falls park.

Next stop was Fuller Falls, a smaller and less-well-known landmark west of Kintampo. We rode the taxi 10km down a good dirt road to a wooden gate and waited. A few minutes later a man rode up on a bicycle and unlocked it for GHC 40,000. Then it was another 2km on a rough, winding dirt track to the parking area. The falls were beautified by a group of Catholic priests living in the area. A minute’s walk down the trail is a gently-sloping walkway of fieldstone set in cement. It leads to the edge of the pool at the foot of the falls and opens into a sort of stone patio overlooking the water. There are benches and tables and planters of the same stone and the whole thing seems to be a single, continuous surface tucked into the forest. It reminded me of the Parc Guell in Barcelona.

The falls are broad and not very high. We had just begun to wade into the pool when it began to rain. Fearing that our escape route would quickly become impassable, we hurried back to the parking lot. Our taxi was a Kia Tico (stands for Totally Inadequate Car-like Object), a very common vehicle in Ghana. Imagine a toddler’s crayon vision of a SmartCar: a big box for the body, a small box for the hood, and wheels the size of dessert plates. Incredibly, it managed to negotiate the treacherous dirt track to the main road. Constantly using one hand to wipe down the fogged-up windows with a dirty rag, the driver eased it through long, deep pools and straddled coursing muddy canyons all the way to the wooden gate, then ably navigated the dirt road back up the hill to the outskirts of town and the Health Research Center. When we got back to Pamela’s room we ate some boiled groundnuts.

The rain let up in the late afternoon and we set out westward on foot towards the descending sun. After about thirty minutes we turned back and watched the sunset from a paved road in town just over the crest of the hill. The sky was mostly clear by then and there were scalloped cirrus clouds high overhead and wispy stratus clouds beyond. They changed from white to pale salmon pink and we continued back to the campus.

Being so close to the equator, night in Ghana falls quickly and at almost the same time every day. Around 6:30 the sun sets and by 6:50 it is dark. Kintampo offers very little in the way of manmade artifice—floodlights, drinking spots with devastating stereo systems—to interfere with night’s abrupt descent or with the envelope of quiet licked by the disappearing sun and pressed shut by chirping and rustling nighttime sounds. When the power is on, the dormitory’s courtyard is alive with the sound of radios and televisions and, occasionally, a student rally; but the din is swaddled in a heavy darkness. We went to bed around 9pm.

Sunday morning we steeled ourselves for the ten-hour ride to Accra. The STC lumbered into the station almost on schedule and we boarded. It was cool and miraculously quiet. No radio, no Nigerian movies. No movies at all, actually. It was delightful. Around 9pm we were back at my house. The air-con has never felt cooler. And the vast array of restaurants to choose from; the fancy grocery stores (two!) with imported cheeses, the wide, smooth main drags; the traffic; the dank air heavy with acrid exhaust fumes and smoke from trash fires; the 24-hour internet café.

The vast majority of Ghanaians live in towns or villages much smaller—and with fewer amenities—than Kintampo. The Accra I inhabit is living abroad lite. I know because I’m typing this paragraph from a palatial house with broadband internet, a big lush yard, satellite TV, hot water, air-con everywhere, a microwave, and hardwood floors. (I’m housesitting.) It’s good to be comfortable, great to be pampered, and easy to forget the rest. Who knew myopia would be crouching in the shadows of the Dark Continent, waiting to pounce?

(Note: My trip to Kintampo took place before my vacation back home. For more on being pampered, wait for the next installment!)