This is a good one!
It all started in South Africa, my friend Michael and I were planning on doing a lot of high risk activities! Although it didn't work out due to weather, we still had 3 more ports. We all knew Ghana was gonna be awesome but we didn't expect a lot of things that happened. It all started with arriving that morning, mike and a lot of others that ended up joining in decided to bike across Ghana. 150 miles! We got off the ship in search for bicycles, what we didn't know is that they would end up being the crappiest bikes we would ever ride. We walked into town, got some money from the ATM and found a few street vendors selling bikes.
We went over there and the brakes, pedals, handle bars all destroyed. Flat tires, missing tubes and barely any paint. We thought we scored big time.
We bought the bikes and the owner said he would fix everything and give them back to us within a few hours so we left, walked around Takoradi for the remainder of the day. It was a blast, we played soccer with a few of the kids and hung out a lot of the time. Honestly it was constantly over 100 degree's all day. We drank out of bags of water and I don't believe they were BPA free haha.
Anyways at the end of the day, we made our way back to the bike shop and picked them up. We tested them and rode them around but we didn't test them as hard as we probably should have! The plan was to leave the next morning, get a good night's rest, hydrate up and get an early start. We ate breakfast in the morning on the ship and we were burning up at 7 A.M. We knew it was going to be a rough day! We got our bikes and within 60 seconds of starting, my pedals, gears, and chain all fell off completely! I could barely stop my bike I just jumped off. Cody and Marine Mike's bike also broke within 10 feet, one lost a tire literally just popped off and mike's chain popped off. Our first thought was "DAMN IT!" After trying to fix them for roughly 4 hours we finally got out of town and slowly but surely started making our way to cape coast.
We had the shortest leg the first day, it was so hot we drank over 1 gallon of water an hour. None of us had pee'd all day, just sweat everything out. We were absolutely disgusting! It took nearly 6 hours to finally reach a town where some of the guys decided to drop out and take a cab to cape coast. Phil (roommate/machine) decided that he wasn't going to quit! I was with him all the way, roommate love haha. So the 9 that started 5 ended up continuing, Phil, Cody, Marine Mike, Shaun White Mike and Me all decided that we would continue on, we kept a good pace, 13 mph until cody's tire popped. What a party pooper! We all decided to shop and take a look, we found a table on the side street and took a look, it was a european tire...we had american tools! We just looked at each other and sighed! Cody yells "you know what this means? BONDING TIME!"
We were in the middle of a jungle, we had been biking with flashlights, sun went down about an hour ago and probably in the most dangerous part of Ghana ..the side of a highway! Fortunately I had planned ahead and bought a sim card for my phone in case of emergencies! Although there was a lot of testosterone involved so we didn't think about the phone. A man approached us and said "Hey guys! Don't you know it's dangerous out here?" We just looked at him and thought "duhhhh, we aren't here for fun". He said "I have a gun!" We just froze! Phil went and hid behind a tree, cody grabbed a stick and a pineapple, Marine Mike and I are staring into the barrel of a hand made pistol that had a 410 Shotgun shell...and there goes shaun white mike saying " Awesome man...Can we see it!?" I literally just about killed him, as did all of us.
This guy pulls his gun out and starts pointing it at all of us. We were literally freaking out, we didn't know what to do. We tried to diffuse the situation by saying we were his friends and that he spoke amazing english. He wasn't really buying it. He told us that we should go to his village that was right through the bushes, at that point I just thought "you showed me your gun, no way I am going anywhere with you."
He looked over at the stick cody had brought over and said "that's not gonna hurt me!" At this point I knew I had a phone and I needed to use it. I called a friend that had a car and was following us to make sure we were safe. I gave him a call and told him that he needed to get to us like RIGHT NOW! I told him that he could find us on the side of the road flashing flash lights. Literally within 15-20 minutes Max shows up and saves the day. The guy with the gun knew he was clearly out matched so he decided to leave. At this point phil is still in the "never give up" mentality, he's a brainwashed student that goes to a military school, totally makes sense.
I was with Phil till Cody turned into our mom and started cussing at us and all that. After 20-30 minutes of trying to talk Phil out of it we cabbed it the rest of the way to cape coast. We stayed at a beautiful beach hostel that night, even took a dip into the ocean. Felt absolutely amazing!
The next morning we all realized that our bikes were done, phil's and Shaun white mike's bike were okay though so they kept going. Our group ended up splitting up, it then became me, gary, and juan and zach!! We ended up going to the cape coast castle, kukumb nation park and then to accra on the worst bus ride ever! When we got to accra, we stayed at Gary's best friend's uncle's house and had a blast! More about that story some other time. There's tour de Ghana for ya!
Stay tuned for Morocco!
-Raj Patel