It was the Thursday early morning, when I
hopped on a tro-tro to Cape Coast, only to board another bus in the
opposite direction, to Accra. A supposedly faster, safer and more
comfortable Ford bus was air-conditioned as if it was carrying Fan-milk
frozen yoghurts and so I was (for once) happy to get off back to the hot
and humid Ghana's weather.
 |
| A strawberry
frozen yoghurt for 1 cedi (25 euro cents) . I think this must be in on
the official list of "best things ever", even if Ghana was not so hot :-) |
To err on the safe side, I was very early
at Kotoka international, and was enjoying the nice moments of waiting
for Tinka without much to do, unlike the days at AIMS where I have always a full to-do list. I opened the Four agreements by Miguel Ruiz
and read "Always do your best" chapter. Wow, so simple, so true, so
difficult to do...But so well written. I made the agreement. If someone
sees me not doing the best - please point it out. Thanks :-)
 |
| Tinka is there by the window, do you see her? |
Back to the airport - the voice
eventually announced: "the flight TAP 1527 has landed" and I jumped up
to the exit of the airport as if Tinka could just get off the plane like
one gets off from a bus at a bus stop. The reality was a bit different,
but finally, after an hour or so, she appeared at the exit door looking
something like this:
After
I've made sure she's real and not only some 3D Skype image, we got on a
taxi back to Kaneshie bus terminal for a very reasonable 20 cedi,
bargained by a friendly passer-by. The taxi journey through Accra was
quite an adventure by itself: at one point we found ourselves at a
decision point - a big pool of half-meter deep mud water in front of us
or an hour of traffic jam behind us? I'll tell you - there's a soul of
an off-roader in these little, decades old Peugeots that drive streets
of Accra.
The Ford bus back "home", however, proved to
be quick again, and we arrived to AIMS just in time for the nice
good-bye speeches by the students to the departing lecturers. We
followed with a Salsa4Water workshop, but as the end of block party was a
bit dead, we soon went back to Chateaux.
 |
| Salsa4Water workshop. As you can see, everyone (including me) is perfectly following Tinka's moves |
The next day we spent around AIMS, visited
Cape Coast, had a frozen yoghurt, a coconut on the beach and finished
off with a walk through Biriwa in the night. I was surprised no one
shouted a single word at us, as normally when I cycle to-and-fro
institute, I am constantly accompanied by shouts like "Obruni, cash!
Money!" or a children's rhyme "Obruni! tatadatata!" (where tatadatata is in Twi, and
I've yet to figure it out, but not sure I really want to know:P)
On
Saturday, we finally set off for the trip, with two backpacks and full
of expectations. The first stop was Cape Coast again, with a marathon of
dress-choosing (Tinka is a women, after all :-P), which took something
over 3 hours, though I guess it could be worse, given the plenty
opportunities in Cape Coast. Not only are there nice, already made
dresses for a good price, you can also make your own! Shops selling
fabric are on every corner and if you ask or just walk around a little
bit (as we did), sooner or later you'll stumble upon some lady with a
sewing machine. Choose a type of dress you want and that's it - a nice,
colourful, Ghanian dress made just for you. The sewing itself, however
takes a day or two, thus we moved on and I picked it up after I came
back from the trip.
 |
| Cape Coast - though this was shot with a "super vivid" effect, the town is actually quite vivid :-) |
We came to Kakum national park for the
evening and were glad to find an empty room in the Rainforest Lodge,
though a bit disappointed that we came too late to go and sleep on a
tree platform in the forest. You need a guide to get there and all of
them were gone by that time. Thus, we at least found out how early we
can start the next morning and enjoyed a dinner of chicken and plantain
chips in a nice place by the entrance of the park.
The
main attraction in the park is the "Canopy walkway", a series of
suspended bridges on the trees that offer nice views of the rainforest
scenery around. Rarely, however, you get to see any animals, though the
rainforest hides many, including monkeys or elephants. Our group (with
two German volunteers and the guide) was no exception, but the excursion
was fun, with the friendly guide knowing quite a few things about the
park, including many of its huge and interestingly shaped trees.
After
we came back, a big group of tourists was just about to set off to the
walkway, so the main advice for anyone visiting Kakum would be - go as
early as possible. And prepare a good story about how you are a student
(if you really are, just bring the student card) - the entrance is
getting expensive even by European standards and the student-discount
comes handy, especially since persuading the cashier you're a Ghanian
(who have another discount) is a bit more difficult (our Romanian
professor of Analytic number theory tried it, after already getting the
student discount, but got a response "don't push it" :-))
 |
| Action pose on the dirt rode to Kakum |
Moving
on, it would not be a trip around Africa without stomach problems, and I
chose my day on Sunday. There's quite a variety of food sold on the
street or local chop bars, and often you might have doubts about the
quality or bacteria inside. But hey! You're travelling, it would be
shame not to give it a try. Anyway, after a nice and fresh frozen yoghurt on the
Cape Coast Metro bus station, we got on a bus to Kumasi, about 4
hours of drive away. We bought three tickets (one around 3 euros), just
to have the luggage next to us, which we started to fully appreciate
when we saw the huge bags of (probably) cassava being literally forced
into the trunk of the old bus. We set off when the bus was finally full
(which is basically the only departure time in Ghana) and Tinka quickly
fell asleep. I enjoyed the first few minutes of breeze flowing in
through the windows, but shortly afterwards, the pains in the stomach
started. And not only that. The road to Kumasi is nice and new, but with one little nuisance - about 50324895370 speed bumps. I
can understand the reason, considering Ghanians often drive the 25
years-old vans with 20 non-seat-belted people inside with the speed of
Formula 1, ignoring the few traffic signs restricting speed and claiming
the number of deaths from car accidents. However, I felt the only safe
way to go over the bump is to actually switch
of the engine and carry the vehicle across, so that you
don't damage it... The cars here are however more robust, much
more than my stomach on that journey, and we eventually got off a few
kilometres before Kumasi when I couldn't bear it any more. But let's
leave out the details!
 |
| With Metro bus |
When we finally
reached the Golden Gate hotel in Kumasi, it was already dark
outside. I decided that my stomach pains from today would not stop me
and went to the local chop bar to get two boxes of food. While I was
waiting for them, a huge storm started and though the hotel was just a
stone's throw away, I came back literally showered. The storm was
however impressive and it was then nice to watch it from behind the
hotel window :-)
The next morning we set off for a day
full of travelling. The goal was to get to Mole national park, or at
least to the villages around and find a place to sleep. We started early
(as every day) and walked to the STC coach station, guided by one
friendly local. Upon arrival, however, the station was empty and we were
informed that the bus to Tamale had left just 10 minutes ago and there's no
more buses today. One more passenger had the same bad luck and since he
knew other options, we joined him to find another bus to Tamale. Asi
(as I remember his name) was a nice guy from Kumasi, but working in
Tamale and he needed to be there by the evening.
Unlike in Europe, where
you normally have one main station, there's many bus stations here,
usually one for each carrier. We were lucky on the second attempt,
finding a smaller air-conditioned bus for 30cedi, bound to leave "soon",
i.e. when it gets completely full. "When you travel somewhere, make most
of it" seems to be the motto here and some people were even seated on
small stools in the alley between the main seats. The trunk was completely
full as well (Tinka said she saw goats getting out of it), and when I looked around the cabin, almost everyone had a
big bag of goods or something else around. We kept the bags around
too, which was a good reason for an annoying mate to come and say "What
is this! You gonna pay! Give me money", kind of forgetting to say how
much (5 cedi eventually) . Luckily, he did not join the trip, though
managed to annoy almost everyone in the bus. Travelling in Ghana is not a
comfortable, no-hassle thing, but then, we did not expect it, neither
came for that reason.
The journey (almost 7 hours)
itself was OK, though again including innumerable speed bumps, the whole
bus jumping around like a motion simulator. If it was not enough, we
opened the Bradt travel guide (invaluable thing for travelling in
Ghana) and read about the last piece of that day's journey - from Tamale
to Mole national park: "the 3 hours hot and dusty tro-tro ride along a
bumpy dirt road ... one of the more memorable rides". Well... :-D
In
Tamale, we barely got off the bus and were immediately being
enthusiastically offered a ride to Mole by a nearby tro-tro. We trusted
Asi to get us a good price, but later found out that the drivers tricked
us, selling the tickets all the way to Wa (twice as far as we went).
Even worse, the tro-tro was far from departing although I've asked and
was told "we're leaving soon". Thus we waited in the suffocating heat of
the afternoon (could be 40 degrees) on the noisy and dirty bus station
for more then an hour, watching sheep eat plastic bags and the
drivers load the roof and the trunk of the poor
tro-tro to the very limits. Another 20 people inside and I was surprised
this thing moved, wondering what will happen on the awaited "hot
and dusty bumpy dirt road". Furthermore, Tinka was not feeling so well
in the heat of the cramped tro-tro, so I was really glad when we
finally moved from the hustle-bustle of the station and the wind started
to blow in. I bought a box of rice and egg from a young hawker (for 1.5
cedi!) at one of the many police barriers on the roads of Ghana, and off we went - to Mole national park.
At
the Fulfoso junction, we got ready for the worst. This is where the dirt
road was supposed to start. Instead, surprisingly, the tro-tro sped up
along a nice, almost empty new road, through sparsely spread out small
villages with pretty round mud houses and little signs of civilisation
around. As we later heard, the reconstruction of the road was finished
just a few months ago, being vital push for the development of the
region.
Larabanga is just a small village and when the
darkness fell down, we felt like we should already be there. When we
asked, however, we were told otherwise and it felt like eternity in the
cramped cabin of the van when we finally approached Larabanga. On top of
all, we made a pee-stop just in front of the village, the whole tro-tro
unloading and then reloading, only to continue another 300m to drop me
and Tinka off (thus half of tro-tro unloading again). At this point,
it's perhaps worth to mention the funny ways of measuring distance by
the locals - when I asked if we should simple get off at the pee-stop,
the driver responded that it's still "far" (although certainly not worth
the unload-reload hassle). On other occasions, "not-far" can be the
distance of tens of kilometres. I've yet to figure out the actual
boundary, but most probably it does not exist and is different from
person to person, or the place you're talking about :-) .
Getting
off at Larabanga, we were again surrounded by a few friendly locals, though I was rather keeping the distance, after reading some
negative reviews in the travel guide. However, I must say these guys
were really just curious and trying to help, which was perhaps not that
necessary, but certainly nice of them. They walked us to the Salia
Brothers Guest house where we were met by the owner and told that he has
no more place for the night. However, his brother runs a second place
further down the road, which had a free space in one of those round mud
houses.
Called Savannah lodge, this place
was truly worth its name and I'd recommend it to anyone who does not
stress on too much comfort and luxury. The rooms in the mud houses are basic, with a
single power plug occupied by the much needed fan, there's no water,
just a bucket shower on the courtyard and you can forget about any
internet or these kind of things. But that's not the point - when we
arrived and sat down behind a table on the yard, flooded with moonlight
of the full moon, savannah with all the wildlife just a couple
kilometres away and enjoying a cold beer with Husain, the owner of the
lodge - it was an end of the day to remember.
 |
| At Savannah lodge. We stayed in the little round house with the open door :-) |
We agreed with Husain to give
us a ride to Mole early in the morning and although we fell asleep a
bit, we made it for the morning safari walk. The park itself covers a
big area thus we could barely scratch the surface of what it has to
offer, but all the same - it's a visit well worth it, especially if you
like elephants, which bath or walk a stone's throw away from you, in
their natural habitat. We've caught a glimpse of monkeys, crocodiles,
antelopes and warhogs too, and enjoyed the beautiful savannah
surroundings and atmosphere.
Because
of the early start, we came back before noon and still had the whole
day in front of us. And one nice thing to do. The Savannah lodge is
not only a place for guests and a home of the big family, it also hides a
primary school, just behind the lodge, which is attended by something
around 200 children from the village. Tinka works in a primary school in
Prague, and it was her idea to let the kids in her class draw some
pictures and make or give out a few presents to the kids in Africa. On
top of that, we also had a few packs of Bonpari candies. But before we
shared it, we took a look around the school and the way the kids are
taught. It was not that new to me, after the school-visits at the local
school in Biriwa, but one can see that Larabanga is even poorer region
and some classes did not even have seats for the kids. On the other
hand, though, all the kids had a nice uniform, the school
was beautifully painted (as we've heared, by a German volunteer a few
years ago) and Tinka was really happy about some of the teachers.
Hopefully including me :-P as I was given a permission to do a few math
exercises/games with the oldest class. And I must say I was amazed - how
active, curious and positive was their attitude towards studying. Just
hope they'll keep it up and won't give up. Though the opportunities are
slim, this attitude can get them far.
 |
| In school at Larabanga |
 |
| Larabanga mosque |
After the school visit, we took a walk to the
village, visiting the Larabanga mosque, a strange building surrounded by
normal houses and neighboured by an old Baobab tree. Claimed to be one
of the oldest mosques in West Africa, it's clear the locals try to make
most of it as a tourist attraction. It's understandable, given the poor
economy of the region. However, here I felt a little like an unwilling
sponsor, paying to simply "walk around the mosque" (you cannot go
inside) and tipping the tour guide (you'd feel bad not to), even though
much of what he mentioned was that more money is needed to sustain the
mosque and extra donations are appreciated. To mention the positive too,
he also shared a bit complicated, though nice legend about the mosque.
But all in all, it was no highlight of the trip.
During
the walk back, we met Fatoe, a guy who was offering trips to Mognori,
an "eco-village" few miles down the dirt road by the Mole national park.
In the travel guide, we've read only positive things about it and were
keen to try it for the second night here on the north, but the problem
was to find a transport for a reasonable price. The one by Fatoe was
certainly not cheap, but acceptable and we liked the fact that he (as
not many Ghanians do) made the effort to explain everything to us
properly (though sometimes a bit too properly for my gusto :-P).
 |
| Last picture with Husain's family |
 |
| With our hosts and chief of Mognori |
Mognori is an interesting small settlement, which,
had it not been for the funding from several projects and governments,
would be very isolated and cut from the "civilisation" . There's no
electricity or pipe water (though they have water drills), but (due to
the investments) they have e.g. several solar-powered public lights! Also, almost
no one in the village speaks English, but many have telephones, and I
think I even saw a smartphone. In any case, the investments have worked
in a good way and we were really feeling welcome and safe. Though very
simple, the whole place is nice and clean, And I cannot really say poor -
the people seemed to be happy with the life, sleeping out on the roof
on a night with clear sky and getting a mango from a tree any time they
wanted. There was peace and no urgency for money, which we've encountered
virtually everywhere during our journey.
 |
| Mognori village in the morning |
Morning came and we were up again for a day full of
travelling. We were driven back to
Larabanga and even further to Damongo, though this was a result of a
misunderstood deal, where we eventually paid much more then expected
and it was an unpleasant goodbye to Fatoe.
In Tamale,
we found out we missed the STC bus again, but luckily found another
air-conditioned one, moreover with a nice big legroom for our seats, not bad for the next 7 hours. Another "perk" was the movies screened
in the TV. Though they were in Ghanian, it was often clear what was
going on. At least Tinka surprised me by saying "she's already seen this
one" and went on to narrate the whole story :-D . More sadly, some films contained brutal violence with lots
of blood, and were watched by almost everyone, including the little boy
climbing over my seat to have a better view... We were only wondering
what effect could it have on the child to watch scenes like that.
Finally
back in Kumasi, this time we went for another hotel, recommended by the
travel guide. Sanbra's hotel has an advantage of a great central
location, which we easily reached from the bus station at which we got
off. Moreover, the rooms are good, for a reasonable price and on top of that :-) there is a restaurant, making really nice
pizzas! But more on that - in
this (much shorter) post :-)
The
next morning, we changed our plans of early start to Koforidua, to make
place for exploring Kumasi a bit. The city centre is actually very
compact and a pleasant place to walk around in the morning. Our little
tour (without tour guide!) saw the Kumasi fort, WW I memorial, large
police station with lots of local policemen, beautiful catholic church
and a get-lost-inside visit to Kejetia market, one of the biggest in
West Africa. I must say, that if I were to point at one city in Ghana
that I liked, it would be Kumasi.
 |
| Kumasi fort. One of the few pictures with one of our heads! :-P |
 |
| Busy street by Kejetia market |
 |
| Catholic church on Roman hill |
 |
| Kejetia market |
 |
| Somehow, this chocolate does not melt |
We checked out from Sanbra and walked to a tro-tro
station with tro-tros to Koforidua. Although the town is quite big and
close to Accra, it does not lie on the main road to the capital and thus
we needed to wait some time till we filled up and were set to go (although our tro-tro had a never-changing sign "Ready to go" on the roof :-D).
Never mind - the atmosphere at the station was nice and calm, with
drivers and everyone joking around, e.g. after I've tried to bargain the
price of the local Ghanian chocolate using Twi ("eyesen?", "eiiii,
aden! tiso!"). After not really succeeding, I also bought a small
English-Twi exercise book...
 |
| Can you see the plantains? :-P |
The journey to Koforidua was nice by itself. We've
gone through some of the pretty parts of Kumasi, passing e.g. a memorial
of Kwame Nkrumah by the huge university campus. Most of the journey,
however, we were trying to spot bananas and plantains on the many trees
surrounding the main road, which were invisible for us till then. Tinka
was first to see them and even made a strategy: Look for a violet "flask" at the end of the branch, and track
the branch towards the root, until you see the plantains. Even though she told me, it took me almost hour to finally spot
them (to a great joy!), but after that they were
everywhere :-)
At Kororidua, we
just bought a box of food and changed to a tro-tro for Boti Falls. I've
called ahead two times to confirm our booking in a chalet by the
waterfall. Thus when we were dropped off at the entrance, with no sign
of life around and darkness approaching fast, we ... did not panic. It
was actually nice, to be finally in the nature of the hilly area, out of
the towns and traffic. A local from the house by the entrance informed
us that the officers who had the keys had already left - however what
followed was the nicest example of hospitality we've encountered on our
trip! Despite a very weak signal, our new friend kept calling the
director and the officers until he was sure someone will come and
accommodate us. Another guy named Stephen meanwhile kept reassuring us
that we are safe and (as he said about 20 times) that there's "no cause
of any alarm" (he event went on to repeat "here, it's no nothing, no
shooting!", which was probably meant as reassurance, though made us
wonder what was going on here in the past :-D) .
When
the officers finally arrived (three of them) from Koforidua, they
apologized and offered us a discount, though we were the only customers
and all this hassle was due to us. And I cannot but wonder - why didn't
they have a full house with this great attitude? The night and day at
Boti falls was definitely the highlight of our trip...
Right
next to the chalet, there was a ping pong table and we went on to play.
As the only ones around, the whole place got a bit eerie, and since
Tinka had watched too many horrors ^-^ she got too distracted with the
ping pong and won only a few games, mostly thanks to her in turn being a
distraction for me :-)
 |
| Jao and Ama - our Ghanian names |
The next morning, we had an agreed tour of
the main points of interest around with Stephen. The caves in the
forest, umbrella rock and the three-headed palm tree are all just an
hour or so of hike apart, and most of the people get to visit them.
Stephen however asked us if we want to continue and return to the falls
through the many dispersed settlements in the woods. Sure thing! Thus we
went on and really got to see the local life and farming around -
which includes mainly bananas, plantains, cassavas, mangos or cocoa.
Other then that, we've seen barrels where alcohol was made, a tree with
melon-like fruits used as a bowl for water and a lovely school hidden in
the hills, founded a few years ago by one American lady (whom we've
also run into :-P) . We finished at the Boti falls again, and changed
into swimming dress - after all, the pool at the bottom is safe to swim
in the dry season ;-)
 |
| Our guide Stephen, by the caves |
 |
| Umbrella rock |
 |
| Three headed palm tree |
 |
| By Boti falls with Stephen |
It
was time to move again, this time just a short distance, but
nonetheless a bit complicated. First we needed to get to some junction
called Nkrakaw, and since I had little idea where it is or how is
pronounced, when a tro-tro was coming I wildly jabbed the finger to all
directions and shouted something like "kra-kraa", which would normally
bring me to psychiatric hospital, but in Ghana only Tinka laughed at me,
and we stopped a tro-tro :-P After a few more changes, we made it to the
Akosombo dam on the lake Volta, the largest man-made lake in the world.
The dam itself was built about 50 years ago, and till this day generates
more then half of Ghana's electricity. We came a bit late, however and
couldn't go inside for an excursion, so we at least found a good
observation point and took some pictures :-)
 |
| By Akosombo dam |
 |
| Tree, sign, Tinka and the dam. I like this picture! :P |
Going back to the Kpong area,
where we had booked a hotel for the night, we've also had a bit of
adrenaline experience, when the tro-tro driver decided to overtake two
trucks on a two-lane road, with cars coming in the opposite direction!
We ended up bumping with right side into one of the trucks, but luckily
that was it (except, of course, for a heated discussion from the cabin full of
passengers for the rest of the journey).
Our last night
was in a hotel called Starr Villa, and although Tinka was more looking
forward for one more night in a nice local mud-house, the hotel was a
good deal. And I don't mind to take a real shower for once! :-P
The
choice of the hotel was also influenced by the neighbouring Cedi bead
store, which sells many local beads, necklaces and similar. Samuel,
the owner, was very kind and introduced us to the history of the
bead-making and gave us directions to the actual factory, not so far
away. Thus after a short visit to the Anamaya market, we went to visit it and were met directly by its owner - mr. Cedi. He took us
through the whole process of bead making, which, surprisingly, starts
with empty bottles of Cola or Sprite! Those are then smashed to powder, a
bead with different colors and shapes is formed and finally put into a
hot furnace for some time before left to cooled down.
 |
| With the Samuel, the shop assistant in Cedi bead store. All of them handmade :-) |
 |
| Some of the beads in Cedi's factory |
 |
| Tinka, Peter and me |
The last stop on our journey was a visit to Peter's pizza place in Aburi, which I won't talk more about here, but rather refer the interested ones to a
my pizza-hunt blog :-)
After the lunch in Aburi, we slowly
got on the way to Accra. A storm was coming
from the north and we had troubles to stop a tro-tro - all of them were completely full. A strong wind took up and a just as one
finally stopped for us and we got in, the rain started hard. We made one
more change at Madina and arrived at the airport junction in Accra,
something around 6 pm. We've had no rain the whole trip, but this last
bit to the airport we got perfectly drenched :-) It must rain so that
you enjoy sunshine, they say. But what they forget is that if there's so much sunshine, you also get to enjoy the rain!
In a few
more hours, the storm calmed down and Tinka left... Left me pinching
myself, if this was not just a too beautiful dream. Ghana is an amazing
country, full of potential, safe, but mostly fun to travel. You never
feel alone, on the contrary - you feel a certain strong energy and
friendship coming out of everyone. Ignoring the problems stemming out of
poverty, Ghana is a rich country - rich in high spirits and mood and
emotions displayed at the right time.
Just as I enjoy
every single bite of a pizza, I've enjoyed every single minute of our
trip. Not the least thanks to my lovely accompanying obruni :-) Smile!
Snap!
