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Published: January 15th 2003
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Burkina Faso is a pretty small country and we didn't get to see a lot of it. We headed south from Ouaga through some national park (didn't see any wildlife except the usual ant and mossies) to the Ghana border. Again this was a quick crossing. Initially the border guys wanted to see us individually with our passports, but when 23 of us showed up outside his rather cramped office, he changed his mind! For those following on maps, the nearest big town is Bolga something.
Ghana again appeared different from BF pretty quickly. More trees, friendlier people, the kids would jump up and down shouting and waving at us as we drove by, things unbelievably got even cheaper, and best of all, the official language is English - we could understand people and signs again! And what signs! Ghana must be a pretty religious country, most of the shop signs have a religious feel to them. For example, God is Great enterprises, Praise the Lord beauty salon, Prince of Peace chemicals and so on. Also we can now read and understand the AIDS awareness signs, and there are plenty of those too. The most commonly used slogan is "If
it's not on, it's not in". Brilliant! The humidity has also gone up by over 100%.
Expecting a day of just driving, we were surprised to pull up outside what appeared to be an old or half built resort in the forest. Things got better and better - there was a waterfall in the river where we could “shower”. The river wasn't deep enough for swimming, but at least we came out clean.
Our first main stop, apart from towns for food and drink, was the Kakum National Park. We camped out in the rainforest overnight (wooden platforms, mossie nets, pitch black and all sorts of strange noises!) then did an early morning canopy walk through the tree tops. The walkway consisted of metal extension ladders with planks laid on them, held up with ropes and a few metal cables. These were strung between trees up to 30m up, with some netting round them to catch you if you slipped. All well and good if you were short, the netting at times only came up to my waist!! There were platforms in the trees between each of the 7 or 8 walkways. Absolutely brilliant, only we didn't see
anything there either, except the usual ants, mossies and other large and huge random insects. I did share my shower with a large frog though.
From Kakum we drove to the coast (at last!) to one of the slave forts. As a group we took a guided tour round Elmina Fort, the guide was excellent, really well informed about the history of that fort and the slave trade in the area too. He was well worth his money as there were no descriptive signs, only labels like “church”, “slave yard”...
Then we went to paradise. We spent three days and nights camped at a beach resort, a flash resort at that. Imagine, sand, palm trees (watch out for those falling coconuts - delicious to eat but will hurt if they hit you!), warm sea, free boogie boards, good waves, good food and wine in the restaurant, absolutely nothing to do but swim, eat and relax.
We are now in Accra and its horrible! Big, noisy, dirty, smelly, hot, humid... luckily soon we are going back to paradise! But at least Accra has air con supermarkets!!! We needed to come here to get our Ethiopian visas, and restock
on luxury food items, but also hit the internet, craft market, clothing market and cafes. We camped at a mosquito infested dump outside of Accra for a couple of nights, missing our beach pad already! A new guy joined the trip here, Noel, also now known as Duane.
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