"We are not young and stupid."

This was said by a young couple from France who joined us for a quiet nature walk in the rain forest national park. They were reflecting on the opportunity to get into the forest and away from fellow tourists.  Before the nature walk, we joined young people from the ship and others on a canopy walk on walkways 30 meters up in the air.  The walkways were suspended from the tallest trees, and we were looking straight down on an assortment of trees and a few butterflies.  Not much was visible in the way of animals or birds, partly because the rest of the platform visitors were quite loud -- calling to their friends as they walked on the 7 suspended bridges that linked the tall trees.

In contrast, there were only 5 of us, plus the guide, on the nature walk.  As is done elsewhere in Africa, those who used to live in the forests and use its plants and animals have now been hired as nature guides.  So we had an introduction to probably 20 different plants and their uses.  We also were taken to the largest tree in the park -- rivaled the redwoods in diameter.

The couple from France had come to Ghana for 3 weeks as volunteers.  At home they are engineers -- but as volunteers, he was teaching rugby, and she was teaching English.  They had a home stay, and were also using this as an opportunity to improve their English.  Rugby lessons were reported to be a bit frustrating because the young men were not that good at English, but they had a good time with their first week.  The other person on the nature walk was a young American woman who was finishing traveling by herself on a 6 week bike trip through Ghana.