The great Ghanaian adventure
On monday, the 14th of November, two brave and wise explorers, Ryan Witcombe and Edward Gonzalez-O'Mahoney, embarked on a tour of the Ghanaian interior. The first leg of our trip was a 30 hour, 500 kilometre boat trip along the worlds largest man made lake, Lake VOlta. Things got of to a bad start, as we arrived at the dock 9 hours early (the Bradt guide to Ghana gets sooooo many things wrong) and spent a boiling hot day sitting in a tin shed, counting down the hours till we could board. The boat was not your typical passenger ferry, it was really just a cargo barge that allowed passengers to sleep outside on its hard steel decks. The Ghanaians travelling on the boat employed some fairly dubious tactics to take all the good spots on the boat, so ed and I were relegated to a nice filthy piece of decking outside the putrid toilets. Things were looking pretty grim, and then it rained, sending many of the Ghana running for cover, whilst we huing around and managed to nab a better position after the deluge. Things got much better from this point, and the 30 hours on board passed fairly pleasantly. We ran aground only twice. Lake Volta is really impressive, at some points we could not see land in any direction. We arived at the township of Yeji at aorund 11:30 pm on tuesday night, and hurried to a local hotel in a small dusty town for a few hours sleep before arising early to catch a smaller fishing boat across the lake to an awaiting bus. The bus drove us to Tamale, a three hour trip on bumpy dirt roads, but it weas still a good trip, the wooded savanna really looking like the kind of vegetation you imagine in Africa. As with many long distance buses in Ghana, a man stood at the front a preched to us for about 45 minutes. This is not unusual, however he was getting pretty animated and sounded really fired up and angry. He kept continuously looking toward the back of the bus where Ed, myself, and about 6 other white people sat. The only part of the sermon we could understand was the constant use of the word 'oberoni' (meaning white man) and glares directed at us. It was really a bizarre experience, and i was quite glad to get off the bus in Tamale. From here we caught another bus on another dirt road to the town of Larabanga, around 3 hours from Tamale. Larabanga is a completely islamic town (the further north you go in Ghana, the closer to the Sahara you get, and the more of the the influence of the Moors and Arabs is evident). We spent slept on the roof of the Salia brothers guesthouse which was great (apart from being woken at 4 and 6 by the call to prayer from the mosque). Larabanga is famous because it has a 600 year old mosque, and more impressively, it is made of mud bricks (that will excite dad). We spent a morning touring the mosque (the outside only, we are not allowed inside). One funny thing is that all the people in Larabanga pronounce mosque "Moks", which kept making me laugh. The following day we made the 10 kilometre trip to Mole National Park. We stayed at Mole Hotel inside the park, which was one of the fancier places i have stayed on my trip (it even had a pool). Mole is well known as a great place as a place to see Elephants in large numbers. However it was mating season when we arrived, so the female elephants had all run away, presumably with the males in hot pursuit. Still, we did a walk around the park for 3 hours in the eraly morning, accompanied by a very small armed gaurd, carrying a gun almost as big as him. We saw a few types of monkeys, lots of warthog, some huge baboons, too many waterbuck and antelope. Ed and I both turned up to the nature walk in our flip-flops (thongs to Aussies), and drew some bad looks from the guides, before the told us it would not be a good idea to walk around the African bush in them. We had to hire wellington boots (gumboots to Aussies). I am suprised we saW any animals as it is pretty damn difficult to sneak up on anything in a pair oversized gumboots. Still, it was well worth doing, and i really needed to see a few animals from the 'Lion King' before leaving this part of Africa. From Mole we got a lift in a back of a truck to Larabanga, where we spent another night, before spending a huge day travelling to Kumasi, Ghana's second largest (and easily best) city. We stayed in the Presbyterian Guesthouse, which is in the grounds of one of the original missionaries to come to Ghana. It was a really nice place to stay. We spent 3 days in Kumasi, spending our days shopping at the cultural centre (buying painting and jewellery) and visiting the Kenjetta (?) market, the biggest market in West Africa. This was also the smelliest mwrket in West Africa, so we did not spend a lot of time there. One interesting fact we uncovered in Kumasi is that it is a crime to jump a fence in Ghana, go figure. After this we headed back to Akropong, to an excited Vera, a lonely Ross, and a couple of cold beers.
Lastly, I am leaving Ghana on December the 8th, just over a week away, having changed my plans and extended my time in Morocco. I will post some more photos soon, and write a last journals for this crazy west african adventure.
Thats all for now,
Ryan
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