Storm

Don't worry! After the loong last post, this time will be a short one  :-) . On Sunday, we had a nice storm during the day, coming over from the ocean. Me, Cyrille and Buri were just on the balcony of AIMS, and saw it approaching. So we took pictures. Before, and after.

Before:

After:

And that's it! :-)

The trip

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!