action and adventure

Life has been fairly busy recently. With one thing and another, it's been months since I've gotten out of Monrovia, so I jumped at the chance to join a group of about twenty to headed for Bong Mines today. Once a site for mining iron ore, it was destroyed during the war. Since then, the structure is slowly being taken apart by locals who sell the pieces as scrap. Groups generally head out with a dayworker from the ship here, Odacious, a man who was working at the mine the day the rebels came through and killed almost everyone. We, however, signed up for the Action Adventure Tour. Led by the ever-fearless Carl and Lourens, our Australian and South African guides, we didn't do things in quite the usual style.

The trip did start out with the traditional train ride. We backed the Land Rovers onto a flat bed, hooked up the engine and took off through the Liberian bush. In the absence of rain, people climb on top of the cars and sit there to enjoy the view. In our case, it was pouring. Phil, Todd and I thought about it for a minute or two, realized we were going to be wet for the rest of the day anyway and climbed up to perch on top of the spare tire on the roof. We sat there, pelted by the rain and watched the countryside flash past like something out of a theme park ride.



When we got too cold on top of the Land Rovers, we climbed back down and into the back cars of the train. No more than big metal boxes with an inch or two of gravel and muddy water at the bottom, they did provide a little shelter from the wind. When the rain stopped, other friends joined us, and we played around in there for the rest of the three hour journey, getting thoroughly wet and muddy. Which, I suppose, is a good thing. Once you've gotten filthy, you're ready for whatever the rest of the day might bring.



What the rest of the day brought was a whole lot of wandering. We stopped at the traditional spots and saw the decaying mine structure and a gorgeous view of the lake from on top of a mountain. This, however, was the Action Adventure Tour, and soon Carl decided it was time for it to live up to its name. We started off in search of a view which he promised us was just around the bend and up the mountain a ways. After a while bushwhacking through ferns and thorn trees and serrated vines that apparently grow about six inches high and perfectly parallel to the ground, we came to the top. Which was a little outcropping of land in the middle of a dense forest. With no view whatsoever.


Not to be daunted, we headed back the way we came, pausing only to pick and eat fresh guavas and crawl through a cool, green tunnel of ferns that had grown up taller than our heads. We piled back into the cars and drove off through the mud and rain to another lookout point. It was at this point that Carl got a gleam in his eye, turned to Lourens and said, Want to see how far we can get? "How far" turned out to be up the mountain even more, through more mud and rocks and rain until we stopped at the top of a steep, rocky slope with an incredible view across the valley.

Away down the mountain, barely visible past the tree line and what looked like a deep gully, the boys spotted a waterfall. The nurse in me almost had a heart attack when the fearless leaders and Phil headed down the scree to see if they could reach it. I briefly considered yelling for them to come back and then, remembering that my health insurance does indeed have coverage for 'repatriation of mortal remains,' I took off after them.

I have never been more scared. There was no good way to get down, so I resorted mostly to sliding as rocks tumbled all around me and I prayed that I'd be able to stop at the bottom. Which I did, quite neatly and with only one or two extra bruises. The payoff was well worth the fear. Cool, clear water rushed down over red rocks stacked on top of each other away up into the jungle. Trees met overhead to form something like a cathedral, right there in the Liberian bush. I could have stayed there for hours.


We finally made our way back through the jungle and up the rocky slope to pile, exhausted, into the cars. We drove home over rutted dirt roads through the gathering dark and yet-again-pouring rain. It was a day well spent.

(Lots more photos are here.)