Established by German finance and Ghanaian local management, Rainbow Garden was set up to help the deeply impoverished community in which it resides. We knew as soon as we walked through the gate that Rainbow Garden was a special place. We were assisted to The Garden Rest, a large wooden veranda with the usual tin roof surrounded by huge leafed shrubs. At the front of the veranda the planting was not so dense as to obscure tantalising glimpses of the lake at the bottom of the garden about fifty meters away. The rear of the veranda opened into a small but very attractive bar at which we met the Lady of the house, (She was quite shy and we never did get her name) who informed us that our bungalow was not yet ready for us but we were welcome to wait in the bar for a short while. We never need asking twice to hang out in a bar, especially one as exotic as this so we ordered two Star Beers and chose a couple of folding chairs at one of the seven or so tables on the veranda, chucked our Rucksacks in the corner and relaxed! ### Backpackers Foot note! Discovered later... Star beer is a five percent lager, brewed by Guinness in Ghana, found in most bars it is OK if good and cold but comes in big 750ml bottles and it's a good idea to share it, or the two thirds of a pint you leave in the bottle when you pour your first glass goes warm very quickly.

By the time we had finished our warmed up beer, our bungalow, Chocolate 1, was ready. We were blown away by what we saw. It had a real African flavor to everything about it. There was a reed roof, a pleasant curved settee, a wooden framed bed with mosquito net a huge electric fan and en suite shower and loo. It also had a lovely veranda looking towards the lake with a couple of comfy chairs and a little table. Don't forget this is budget, or even possibly shoestring rated accommodation in the Bradt Guide, so yes it was a little rough round the edges and "home-madey" to the European eye, although we prefer now to call it Ghanaian.

We wandered around the large garden which has about a hundred meters of lake frontage, from which we could see about 75% of the perimeter of the circular lake with its enclosing ring of steep forested hills rising to an even 500 meters above the lake all round. We guessed the lake was about 2 or 3 miles across. The only break in this protective rim was the gorge down which we had been driven to Abono, about two and a half miles south of Rainbow Garden, which was hidden behind the forest. There were perhaps six or seven fishermen spread out about 100 meters from the shore on their individual log canoes which they paddled proficiently with 1 foot by 1 foot pieces of flexible plastic cut from 25 litre drums. Each was attending to his own lines of seine nets strung in huge lines marked by floats made of wooden sticks or in some cases empty water bottles. The lake has been heavily overfished and in living memory the fishermen brought home enough fish in a couple of hours a day to keep their families fed but the lake has been overfished for so long that now they fish nearly twelve hours a day to catch enough tiny fish to survive on.

As the tropical sun set behind the mountains at six it suddenly went dark and we joined our fellow guests on the veranda for dinner. They were three adventurous old German Ladies who were here for five days as part of an organised tour of Ghana, and we all enjoyed our curry and rice dinner on the veranda, pleased to know that at least some of what we spent while we were here was going to go back into helping this incredibly poor community.