First published on June 27, 2016
When I read Kofi Akpabli’s post on Facebook about Martin swimming across Lake Bosomtwe, I thought it would be a great adventure. So when Kofi told me Martin wanted someone to accompany him, I gladly agreed to because I knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Plus, I will never turn down an opportunity to visit a tourist site.
I thought Martin would be a 32-year-old man who travels the world and does crazy stuff, but I was wrong. Martin Fodor is a 47-year-old Slovak who works for the World Bank as a Senior Environmental Specialist. I wondered why an environmental expert would want to swim 8.4 kilometers across a lake – so I asked him, and he replied, “It’s a beautiful thing, and how many times do you get to swim a crater lake? It’s clean too.”
Lake Bosomtwe is a natural lake located southeast of Kumasi and formed by a meteorite strike over a million years ago. Swimming or taking a boat ride on the lake is like riding in a big bathtub. But this time, you are surrounded by mountains and hills. The lake is in the middle of many villages, with very welcoming people and beautiful resorts, hotels, a ranch, and bars – Paradise Resort, The Green Ranch, Cocoa Village Guesthouse, and Destiny Bar.
It wasn’t the first time Martin performed an extreme act. He has already ridden a motorbike across the country from Greater Accra through Volta, the three Northern Regions, the Western Region, Ashanti, and the Eastern Region, then back to Accra. Also, he has already taken a bath in a volcanic crater lake in Uganda.
Though Martin’s swim across the lake was for personal fulfillment and to promote tourism, he tried to do it professionally. He adhered to the rules of marathon swimming, from standard equipment to swim rules. I guess the perfectionist in him won’t allow for a haphazard job.
The lake is considered sacred by the surrounding communities. It is forbidden to touch the water with metal. The traditional boat here is a large plank of wood (pedua), but over time, people have compromised by allowing tourists to ride on the lake in motorboats, which we used as an escort boat.
We arrived at Ankaase, one of the 21 communities living around the shores, on Saturday, 25th June, at about 8:20 am. Martin then warmed up, and at 8:30, he walked into the lake to begin his 8.4 km swim to Abonu. He made two stops: one to drink water and the other to have an energy gel. He did this without touching the escort boat or any of us on board.
After about 3 hours and 17 seconds, Martin was on the shores of Abonu and walked out of the lake to a hero’s welcome from the locals in front of Destiny Bar – a bar owned by Sammy, the escort boat guy. It was the first time the locals would witness this spectacle. Before Martin, there were rumors of a “white lady” who had completed the course in 4 hours and 30 minutes.
He staggered out of the lake, but after feeding off the energy from his cheerleaders, he spent the next hour interacting and taking pictures with locals and foreign tourists. People marveled at the amount of energy Martin exhibited after a 3-hour swim along 8.4 km, so a woman asked him how he did it, and he said, “I moved my legs and hands. But you have to move them properly.”
Martin Fodor has tourism at heart, and that has been a source of inspiration for this performance, which will book a place for him in the tourism history books of Ghana, to be the first person on record to swim across the magnificent Lake Bosomtwe in a record time of 3 hours 17 seconds, covering a distance of 8.4 kilometers.
I enjoyed every minute at Abonu, with its serene and quiet atmosphere overlooking the lake and its landscape, offering a vista of nature. Martin told a local that he thinks people will now have a reason to visit the lake, as they have a record to beat.
What do you do after making history and setting a record? Well, Martin plans to come back to swim from Ankaase, doubling his current distance covered.
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