Transit: 12km for a total of 907km (8 full cycling days and 55 hours of riding time) With only a day left, we headed back to Accra to prepare for our flight tomorrow -- not a minute too soon for Shauna. The bus ride was long and hot. We crossed the border again with our bikes, and then caught a bus from the Ghanaian border town of Aflao. There were lots of police blockades to stop at on our ride back to Accra. The bus driver seemed to be getting quite annoyed at all the requests by officers to check luggage. On our arrival into Accra, we decided to find another part of town to stay in. We choose North Ridge and a little guest house, which came highly recommended in Trip Advisor. It was somewhat ... read more

Riding Day 7 - 125km (total 800km) After an interesting stop in the historical town of Cape Coast, we started on our longest ride of the trip -- Accra. The ride started off well enough, but the big difference is that we didn't have a good enough shoulder to ride on through out the whole ride, so we had to be defensive and ride on the road when we could and move over to the shoulder when we had vehicles passing us. Once we hit the Winneba junction (50km outside of Accra), though, traffic started to really pick up. As each kilometer passed we could just feel we were getting closer and closer to Accra. Before we could reach Accra, we had to deal with our first bit of rain. In typical fashion for this part ... read more

Riding Day 3 - 105km (total 298km) After an unexpected day off, we were back on the road again. This time to a small town called Nkawkaw, which lay in-between Accra and Kumasi. The restaurant we had lunch at in Koff Town, had a another restaurant at the junction to the main Accra/Kumasi highway. Since we had a good meal and Linda Dor in Koff Town, there other restaurant would be good enough option for breakfast, and we weren't disappointed. Unfortunately, restaurants like this were the exception and not the rule on the road. We were to soon find out that that juice, yogurt drinks, cookies, cake, and peanuts (for me) would make up our diet during our rides. There was food in the villages, but I just couldn't go there. The haunting memories of Accra ... read more

We arrived on Saturday night after a loooong flight. The flight over the Sahara was so cool, though. I never really realized how large of a desert it really is. We flew for hours with nothing but sand beneath. It didn't look very hospitable down there. Upon arrival, getting through immigration and customs was easy enough, but after that... well, that is another story. We quickly learned that people here (at least at the airport) expect a tip for almost everything. The baggage handlers wanted a tip for just giving me our bicycles! Then we had the ubiquitous touts swarming around me after leaving the terminal (I left Shauna within the safety of the terminal until I figured our transportation into town). Fortunately, there was a man from our hotel (I actually made reservation this time, ... read more

Since I was uable to secure more than five days at the Metro hotel (I really like this one), I had to find another one. I decided to try the southside of the city to get different perspective on the city. It took me 35 minutes to get there by subway. Given that hotels seemed to be pretty full right now, I tried a "love motel", since these usually book by the hour... It isn't as bad as you would think. The hotel was actually recommended by Lonely Planet. The rooms are very nice -- kind of like the Fantasyland Hotel, but the hotel is set up mainly for "discrete couples" looking for a few quiet hours alone. Seoul has hundreds of these around the city. The whole experience should be interesting. I did start to ... read more