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20 Feb: An elephant sized glass! | ||||||
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Ghana 18 february. to tamale. As is our preference, we get to the border post before 9 and start the fomalities of crossing. Paga is a major border crossing and there are many people milling around, officials of course, but also money changers, food and drink sellers, border "facilitators" and general hangers on. The crossing itself is relatively painless, taking just over an hour. For the first time, we come across meticulous border guards in those from Ghana. The Carnet has never been so thoroughly checked against the vehicle and we meet our first health officer, verifying our vaccinations. I leave everything to Marie-Jo and chat to whoever's hanging around outside the various border offices as we make our way across from Burkina and into Ghana, mainly about the upcoming Man U - Liverpool FA Cup game. I'm wearing my United top for luck... We drive down towards Bolga, only about 30km from the border but as is often the way close to borders we have to go through a repetition of road blocks by Customs, Police and the Gendarmerie before reaching the town. It makes for dull travelling. Once in Bolga and looking to change some euros, we come across a slightly worse for wear policeman outside one closed bank (it being saturday) with a worring penchant for waving his machine gun around a bit too freely. However, he's a nice enough fellow (if almost totally impossible to understand) and offers to show us some-where we can change money. He takes us into what looks from the outside to be a cigarette warehouse and through a couple of rooms before we come to a bureau d'echange stuck in a corner. Very bizarre and we never would have guessed. Almost immediately, the policeman starts a heated argument with a couple of Rastas ahead of us in the queue that seems to be about respect. There is much waving going on - mostly of hair but occasionally of machine gun which is slightly offputting. We have no idea really what is going on and Marie-Jo wisely retreats outside. Everything seems to end well enough however. My turn, and changing 100 euro, MJ and I become instant cedi millionaires! Our pockets are bulging with wads of 5,000 cedi. (1 euro = 10,700 cedi) We're rich!! Like the Rastas (ultimately), I pay my respect to the law and we head off to wander around the town a bit before settling down to watch the footie. At half time, I give up the game for lost and we continue down the road to the Catholic Guest House in Tamale for the night. Final score that night, Mosquitos 15 - Mark & Marie-Jo 0! Co-ordinates for the Catholic Guest House are GPS: N 15°00.608 W002°56.875. Pretty steep price wise at 123,000 cedi for a double with aircon considering what it is, but rooms do come with free mosquitos. Possibility to camp in the guest house grounds. 19 february. tamale to mole national park For the first time since Morocco, we see grass again to-day. Just clumps of it appearing by the side of the road, nothing like a lawn or anything you understand, but just enough to indicate we are moving out of the Sahel and towards the tropics. It's an exciting moment after months of sand and dust. Mole National Park is some 130 km SW of Tamale. It doesn't seem to have a single mole within it, but does have plenty of termites, deer, warthogs, monkeys and apes, antelopes, crocodlies and over 600 elephants at last count. Apparantly, there are also lions in the 5,000 sq. km park, but if they are there they wisely stay well away from the park lodge and it's surroundings. The lodge is situated on the top of a ridge that overlooks two waterholes on the plain below and the animals flock to them in this the dry season. The rooms are airy and clean. We take Tshukudu and Safari Sam for a drive around the park in the afternoon, following another 4x4 laden with a guide and 10 hotel guests. We're looking to get up close and personal with some elephants and to introduce Safari Sam to one of his brothers if at all possible. Nothing doing. Apart from omnipresent deer popping up about 50m away from us at every turn like well positioned targets in a fairground shoot the duck stall there's not much poking it's head up for us to see. The crocs do blink at us malevently however from their pool. If you want to Google Earth the park, the GPS of the viewing platform just to the south of the lodge's swimming pool is N 09°15.620 W001°51.354. 20 february. mole np to sunyani We wake up to find a solitary male elephant munching on a tree just outside our balcony! A family of warthogs trundle past on our way to breakfast beside the swimming pool. While waiting for breakfast to be served, the elephant appears around the side of the shower block, carefully steps over the low wall surrounding the pool area and has a long drink out of the pool to the delight of every-one apart from the nervous park guide, who spends his time shooing every-one back and away from trying to take photos too close to the drinking elephant. After a few days in Ghana now it's becoming clear to us that Ghana was indeed run by the British and British public school boys at that. Every single thing seems to be labelled with Tippex. Chairs, tables, pillow cases, bins, aircon units, TVs, trees, houses... We daren't steal anything! Just in case, I've tippexed my own code on Marie-Jo's bum to ensure I can identify her if someone does sneak off with her. NMA/01! As we drive south towards Kumasi, the landscape changes significantly. Everything turns green and grows taller. Instead of flat Sahel scrubland that dominates much of Senegal, Mali, Burkina and northern Ghana, we're now driving through rolling hillsides covered in lush vegetation and forests. Mud huts are replaced by brick houses in the villages and we start to see tarmaced side roads off from the main road we're driving along. Shoes and trainers replace flip-flops more and more often on people's feet. The road side stalls sell big branches of bananas, ripe citrus fruit and red red tomatoes rather than piles of yams or dried wood. By the time we reach Sunyani the change is complete. Sunyani is a bustling town with a distinct colonial feel and a town centre full of multi-story buildings. Church spires too reach up towards the sky with more frequency here. And with christianity comes the messages. Everywhere here are messages praising God or Jesus: "God is Great" hair salon, "Jesus saves us all" driving school. "Exodus 14:14 mechanics". There are also churches on seemingly every street as well as prayer centres. One favourite sign is by one church for a "Holy Ghost convention"... we just can't imagine how you pin name badges onto the delegates.
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Come in, the water's lovely | |||||
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I live in the Mole | |||||
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MJ in the morning before her coffee hit | |||||
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