Beep! beep! went my alarm the next morning but in the background the noise of
rain meant I had a legitimate excuse not to get up and go and see the Cape
Coast castle. These slaving forts are the African equivalent of Asian temples
and you need to see a few before you can be considered a tourist, but this
one would have to wait. I wasn’t sure what time the bus would be leaving but
I guessed it would be best not to hang around too late, being Friday and all.
I am a foolish boy and should have bought my ticket the day before as the 1pm
bus was full, as was the 4pm bus! Damn, no Irish pub for me! Luckily Peter
and Renet from Holland also needed to get to Accra as Peter was flying home
the next day so we shared a cab. Half a Million it cost us! Big bucks. It was
worth it, its a 3 hour ride in a cab, 4 in the bus (if it bothers to turn up)
and god knows how much in a tro-tro. I hope I never find out. They were a
interesting couple having lived and worked

Groovy
This guy challenged me to a dance off but I showed him how to boogie!

in Benin for a couple of years for
the EU and as a teacher and we had a great chat as we followed the coast road
back to the capital.

In Accra there was no way I was checking back into my dump of a previous
hotel so I decided the best thing to do would be to go to church! That’s
right, lots of churches have guest houses attached in Ghana. I got it
slightly wrong in that it was slightly more expensive than the dump I first
stayed in, but it was another quid well spent as it was nicely tiled, TV,
window (!), fridge, cleans sheets, nice bathroom and AC. Praise the Lord! I
had trouble finding it and as per the usual rules I asked a passing white guy
who chatted away in Ghanaian to some local women and got a kid to point me in
the right direction. I said I would buy him a beer at Ryan’s Irish Pub if he
was coming down and he told me there were free drinks at the museum across
the road where he was having the opening of his art exhibition at 5.30pm. I
said I would be there, but first I still needed a charger for my gadgets.
You would think the main market of the capital city of a very large country
would be able to provide me with one, but no dice. I had a good walk around,
got slightly lost (easily solved by getting into a cab) but didn’t find
anything remotely suitable. I went home in defeat, I didn’t even see an
unsuitable one like the millions they had in Cape Coast. After my third
shower of the day I headed over to see the exhibition. 5.25pm, they wouldn’t
let me in. God damn jobs worths! I hung around for a bit and went it for a
look. Hey, I know nothing about art but I know what i like! Adrian Jeans was
the guy for future reference, and the Prof. Akram. A cross cultural exhibition
with Ghanaian and British art. They had the British Council guy there and a TV
crew. Doesn’t take much to make the news over here! It was quite busy and I
hung around to see something new, snagged a Sprite and headed off into town.
Checking my email confirmed Anna and Tua were still in Accra and would be up
for a Guinness or 10 later. Nice, you can’t celebrate St Paddy’s Day on your
own. I quickly had the worst curry I had ever eaten (ever heard of putting
some curry in the curry?) and went down to the pub.

The place was heaving, there must have been every white person in Accra there
and plenty of locals, they had a live band playing along and a few people
were dancing already. I went into the bar and grabbed a beer, no green dye
though, bloody heathens! I must be able to smell Swedes as I started chatting
to a guy at the bar and guess where he came from? Probably the only one in
there too. Tua and Anna were no where to be found so I propped up the bar,
laughing and chatting with all the people trying to get a drink from the
inept and horribly overworked staff. I hope they got a good bonus that night
because people were shouting at them from all sides for drinks and they
couldn’t keep up. I met another Anna from Leeds too, its good to make friends!
Swedish Anna and Tua were outside with some local guy they had picked up (or
vice versa) so we sat out there and chatted. A guy called Jeff from Canada
tried to get Anna to dance while Tua was off battling for beer but she wasn’t
ready for the dance floor yet. Or she wasn’t ready for Jeff! Eventually we got
up to ‘shake our boom-boom’ as the Ghanaians so quaintly put it and stayed on
the dance floor until they closed. The music was western pop covers and
African. The band was good, but they looked as miserable as hell from playing
the same set over and over. They let people from the crowd up to play the
bongos and its always fun to listen to singers whose first language isn’t
English interpret classic songs and get the lyrics all confused. The girls had
kicked off their flip flops and then I was making everyone else dancing with
us take off their shoes. We had quite a pile! And after an hour of dancing on
concrete my sandals felt like satin slippers when I put them back on.

They introduced me to Jo too, a Manchester girl on a trans-africa trip, jammy
bugger. Come midnight the band stopped playing (and didn’t heard a single
Irish song all night) and a group of us stumbled off for a beer in Osu on the
main street. They wanted to closed their street side bar too, but I think the
sight of 15 people after beer appealed to their wallets more than sleep and
we got served. Jo had had a few rides with a danish guy called Peter who had
his own car, I thought he sounded like a German prison guard :p We sat
talking for a good while and people started to leave. It was too early
though, it was only about 2pm by now and the night was still young. Anna,
Tua, myself and some other guy decided we were still up for it, but we
didn’t know a suitable club. Of course the taxi drivers were full of
suggestions and we ended up at a place called Jokers. Bit of a notorious spot
in Accra I think.

The cheeky buggers wanted 100,000 (£6) each to get in, but
you could drink outside so we sat there for a while talking to some Rasta
guy. We wanted to dance though ad eventually the price dropped to 50,000 each
and we went in. Bit of a dive, but not bad. They had a dance floor and I was
recognizing more and more African music now and some of it was great.
We had a good boogie, I think Tua liked the guy were with but he got accosted
by a lady of the night and was chatting to her for a bit too long, suddenly
the girls were going home. Bah! A woman scorned is not s thing to trifle
with. We then stood outside for what seems like ages to my alcohol sozzled
brain talking to some rasta bloke (why is it always the Rasta’s?? ;p) about
god knows what, probably the usual about white and black both being red
inside and we’re all Africans (apart from the soulless GW Bush). The
conversation turned more serious when he said all gays should be killed or
something, and we were forced to adopt out usual liberal white position of
saying we shouldn’t judge anyone. Homosexuality only came up in conversation
3 times when I was there and i get the impression its not popular. Shame how
such ordinary friendly people can be so intolerant sometimes, but who am I
to judge? The girls piled into one taxi, the boys in another and we headed
off in different directions. It was 5am, not a bad night!

Today was the big day I was going to do something touristy! I didn’t get up
very early after getting into ‘The Da Vinci Code’ which I hadn’t read before.
After a quick lunch of egg sandwiches on the roof I jumped into a taxi for
the 40km ride to Kakum National Park. I got there for pretty much the last
walk of the day, flashed my student card for my discount and hung around the
museum waiting for my guide. We had a good chat about our lives while walking
up to the canopy walkway a couple of Canadians had built 11 years ago. It was
just us two which was great because if I was going to see any wildlife it
would be now since I knew when to shut the hell up was trying to walk
quietly. Didn’t make any difference really, the jungle was pretty dense. You
could occasionally hear animals moving around but you couldn’t really see
them. The most interesting thing on the way up to the walkway was one of
those ferns that bunch its leaves up when you touch it. Yawn.
The Canopy walkway was hardly the terrifying nightmare Anna and Tua had

Kakum

described it, but then Im not really afraid of highs and it looked solid and
pretty new. If it had looked like a deathtrap I might have changed my mind.
You really need binoculars t see anything up there, there were a few
butterflies knocking around but not monkeys ad virtually no birds. Apparently
there was one but was taking a picture in the other direction and missed it
Doh. All in all a great trip :p Still, it was nice to get up in the tree tops
and see over the jungle. I got a few nice photos, I hope. I’d hardly taken it
out with me because its not much fun to have no subject to take photos of. I
was constantly seeing great things when walking around but it feels so
intrusive to whip your camera out and point it in someone’s face.
The waitress at my hotel had foolishly told me that she would send people to
‘Oasis’ if they had stopped serving food so I took her advice (and my custom)
and went down there to eat dinner. At least there were more people than
usual, but they were mostly speaking German so that was me out of the
conversation. Was a nice place by the beach though and they had a good menu
so I was happy. Having tourists mean that they actually had some food in that
I wanted to eat, as opposed to choosing from a small selection of what they
could be bothered to cook. I was told many times that there was no bananas,
pineapples or oranges. Its Africa for cripes sake, go onto the street, buy
some and sell them to me for a massive profit!

The girls were heading east back to Accra and then the east coast and I was
going back to Cape Coast to see the rainforest so our paths we together for a
while. They dropped their bags of at my room to wake me up and pack while
they hiked over to see the castle. They didn’t get robbed either, stupid
guidebook! I got my shit together, paid for my room and when they got back
went and got a taxi. Nana was very sad to see us go, but I promised I’d see
him again as I decided Busua would be a great place to see the eclipse in 2
weeks time. Even if it was cloudy you can’t beat a nice beach, and surely it
would be heaving with pretty tourists then!
We got a taxi to the junction and then onto Takoradi, my treat. Our taxi
driver asked some ‘peacekeeper’ guard bloke where the ATM was at the market
and he jumped in the cab with us only to drive nearly full circe around the
circular market to the bank. If we had looked behind us when he got in we
would have seen it. Just another example of the craziness of Ghana. I think
he just wanted a ride with some white girls.
The big bus to Accra was full so we went and waited in a A/C minibus up the
road from the station. The customers were getting a bit irate as the
scheduled departure time had come and gone, they were sitting in the bus with
virtually no ventilation and of course no one would waste money turning the
engine and A/C on for the benefit of the customers. We were told it would
leave right away and sat there for 45 minutes. Not that we expected it to
leave but why lie? I even had to jump out to shout Tua because we were
leaving ‘now’ and she had to come running up only to sit there for another 10
minutes. Hey ho, welcome to Africa. At least there were no goats on the bus!
We set off and an hour and a half later I was in Cape Coast saying goodbye to
the girls. I nearly went all the way to Accra because the stupid driver
forgot I wasn’t going all the way. I had realised that St Patrick’s Day was
imminent and it would be a good idea to spend it in an Irish bar, so I would
be back in the capital in 2 days if they were still there. Pretty stupid to
backtrack so much but plans are for the boring people, not disorganised free
spirits like myself.
I checked into Sammos guesthouse which was ok and went for a walk around
town. The power adapter I was using to charge my mp3 player, PSP and backup
hard drive decided to break when I was there so I faced an uncertain future
with no technological barriers to the local population. I might be forced
into being sociable. The waitress in the restaurant was socialable enough,
seems they all like single men and can’t understand why we’re not married.
Seems like love and finding the right person doesn’t really enter into it.
I had a good walk around town, found a ATM to restock the funds, spent 10
minutes in an internet cafe staring at the screen, not the fastest place in
the world to browse the information superhighway. I also visited about 15
shops looking for a power adapter, they all had the same crappy low current
ones which might work on my mp3 player but nothing else. Anna and Tua had
recommended ‘Joyce’s lover spot’ as the place to go. It was great if you like
distorted African music blasting right into your ears 1 meter away. Took a
long time to drink that beer and I had the usual conversation with some guy
who asked for my phone number. Ghanaians love to do this too, email, address,
phone number, they want your details. Not to necessarily get in touch with
you, but as proof that they talked to a foreigner. Although I fully expect a
stream of people I fleetingly met turning up at my door in the near future. I
gave him a fake number.

I got up feeling fine, I hadn’t drunk that much to feel bad the next day and
Ghanaian beer hasn’t given me a hangover yet, obviously I need to do some more
research! I found the girls eating breakfast by the beach in my hotel, the
local guy chatting them up wasn’t very happy to see me but I think they were.
It’s not fun to be the victim of unwanted attention all the time and they had
a understanding sympathizer in me after being stalked for 2 days! Tua was a
it worse for wear and had drunk just as much as Anna who is half a foot
taller, maybe Anna should just drink more. We played the chili’s through the
bars sound system and Anna put on Belle and Sebastian, I think they liked my
mp3 player more than me! Some local suggested a game of volleyball with a
couple of german girls which seemed a good idea, except it was too windy and
we were too crap. I had a good laugh watching Anna nearly drown with every
second wave, you wouldn’t have though that girl lives in a seaside city but I
paid the price for laughing by losing my sunglasses to a rogue wave. Just as
I was gong to put them in my pocket too! 2 pearls of wisdom: Never turn your
back on the ocean and karma is a bitch.
The hotel food wasn’t that impressive, it was 1pm, I’d had no breakfast and
the girls would make sure I wouldn’t run out of money (they said) so I could
afford to eat again. For want of a better option we went back to Nana’s for
lunch. We all ordered and got drinks. The girls started talking about pizza
for that evening, you needed to give notice so he could make it. We asked
Nana and he said we should write it in his book for advance orders. I went
and got my mp3 player when the electricity came back on. I had quite a few
swedish albums which obviously went down well with the girls. They were
playing crazy Swedish songs singing along, drinking coke and getting hungrier,
but then Nana likes to take his time and get it right! He kept telling me
about some goat meat he was cooking in tomato sauce. Yeah, great! Like Im
interested in dead goats…
I guess I waited maybe an hour and half to ask exactly when our food would be
arriving. 6.30pm he said… at least we saw the funny side, the girls were in
hysterics (low blood sugar). Yeah, our idea of a good time is sitting in a
little sweaty room for half an hour with no fan that’s next to an open sewer
and then another hour listening to swedish pop while there’s a beach not 50m
away where we could be swimming! Not. We repeated our order and went and sat
on the beach in despair to return in half an hour. Kind of a wasted
afternoon, but there really was nothing else to do. The girls did want to see
the fort in Dixcove but now it was late afternoon and we still hadn’t eaten.
We played in the sand with the local kids for a while and followed the sewer
back to our food. We chatted to a middle aged belgian guy for a while who was
tucking into a lump of goat meat. Poor little bugger! Finally we got our
‘lunch’, just before sunset. Time for a few more beers anyway, it helps the
pain :p Since I had just eaten I asked if I could hold off on my evening meal
until I was ready. I got it half an hour later to the girls delight, they had
wisely cancelled their pizza. We had the restaurant pretty much to ourselves,
scaring all the other tourists of with obscure western music. The Japanese
couple that had been sitting next to us at breakfast (and drinking beer it
was soon noticed) came for some food and took delivery of a bongo drum they’d
ordered. The guy gave a demo and he was pretty good. He said he sold them in
Japan fr $450, and only paid about $40 for it.
The local kids loved the girls and were getting cheeky to the amusement of
Nana’s wife. ‘I love you’ they said. ‘I will kiss you tomorrow’ and ‘i will
kiss you tomorrow at eight o’clock’. We put on Michael Jackson and started
dancing in the street with the kids, Nana disappeared and was asleep around
the corner, exhausted from his day of not cooking our food. It wasn’t that
late and we wanted to keep drinking but we were fed up with being in the same
place all day. We went looking for the party, but we’d drank our last beer of
the night. Alaska? Closed. Secret Bar? closed. We carried on down the beach
and although all the lights were off we could see 3 people smoking at the
sessions bar. Seems like this was the place.
The Rasta owner was a nice guy, he told us to come sit down and join the
party. He was cutting weed from a block the size of a video cassette, then he
rolled a massive bifta by the moonlight and lit it. The guy had some dread
skills! He went and got his bongo drum and we all stared singing some random
song. He tried to get the girls to sing whatever they were thinking about
and we could have some kinda freeform reggae improvisation session going on
but he was too stoned to explain it properly to them. I knew what he meant
but told him they were to white to be able to do stuff like that :p Mind you,
they we trying to teach me a simple phrase in Ghanaian to repeat over the drum
pattern and I couldn’t keep it in my head. The girls wanted to sleep so we
said goodbye. Ask I went to leave they asked if I wanted to buy some ganja to
take home! Yeah, I’ll take a couple of kilos! not! I staggered home to listen
to the Ozrics and Air.

When I woke up, the bikini was gone! Not quite as funny as my crap joke about
dreaming I was eating a giant marshmallow and when I woke up my pillow was
gone, but i felt a huge weight lift from my shoulders. Not taking any chances
I skipped breakfast (couldn’t afford it anyway) and skipped all the way to
the next village. My guidebook said lots of people got robbed on the way
there so I left everything behind apart from a few quid in my pocket and
pinned a bit more emergency cash inside my shorts. I think this was before
the road was built as I could imagine walking along a path in the jungle
would be now quite as safe as the road that is now there.
Ah real village life I thought, not a hotel in the place so obviously no semi
permanent white residents. A proper little fishing town, with a harbor and
brightly colored boats. I passed a football match where a game was in
progress, the women were pumping water from a well nearby and kids were
carrying it home on their heads in big buckets. No tourist trap here…
Whoever taught the kids to speak that evil word they were all saying needs
shooting! And whoever encourages it needs stabbing. A few times. If you’ve
ever been to China you will know that the only english word everyone knows is
‘hello and after walking through a town and having 500 people say it to you,
you stop replying pretty soon and just get annoyed. Still, it is far better
than every two to seven year old holding their hands out and saying ‘money’.
That is just depressing, but then half of them don’t know what they’re saying
and just going along with everyone else. The kids are so cute you can’t hate
them, just the fact that a lot of people in this country have very little,
but still believe that money will solve all their problems. Still that’s easy
for me to say…
The castle was cool, nicely restored and the caretaker gave me a great tour
around. Its now owned by an English guy and they did a lot of work on it, I
can’t help thinking its going to be ruined by commercialism instead of te
weather (they’re building a swimming pool on the headland in front of it) but
it certainly makes an impressive, if saddening, site. The slaves were kept in
tiny rooms, any food they got was just throw into the cells, there were no
toilets, little ventilation, 30 people to a tiny cell, rape of female slaves
was commonplace, only the strongest survived this ordeal which might last for
months before they arrived over the Atlantic and a life of misery, never to
see their home or family again. Far too many of these places were build to
house slaves to be transported off to death or the new world and although
Nana told me that night that he loves Tony Blair and the british as ‘out
colonial masters’ I think its a sad legacy to leave to a country as nice as
Ghana. Still, it was well before I was born, and no one alive today can
remember slavery so I don’t feel too much guilt. Still, the British Empire was
built on the profits of human misery, if it hadn’t happened we wouldn’t be as
rich as we are now, it displaced millions and we’ll never know how many
people died or suffered in pursuit of that four letter word – money.
But hey, I was on holiday by the beach and I wasn’t going to get depressed!
Life was good, it looked like it was finally over between Angela and myself,
I felt some slight twinges of guilt for being so mean but it was a
rollercoaster of emotions all the way. Ambivalence, boredom, annoyance,
dread, more annoyance and finally relief. The last thing she said was ‘I
really like you’ to which I said ‘ok thanks. see you’. I couldn’t understand
how she could leave without saying she loved me, but then I know nothing
about women.
Another lazy day but now it was no longer the weekend so the very few people
who were there mostly left. Perhaps it was time to move on, but I’d only just
got there! There really was bugger all to do, the surf was ok for boogie
boarding and they had some surf boards but the swell wasn’t really enough and
the boards a bit too short for me. I had plenty of books to get through
though and with lack of other distractions i was getting through them at a
fair clip. I resolved to leave the next day go and see some culture, surely
there were some interesting things to see in this country, I wasn’t here to
read but for adventure, excitement and really wild things!
One last trip to Nana’s for dinner and he had a crowd! Seems like my chat had
bolstered his confidence and he had grabbed every tourist in town, all 8 of
them! No room for me really but I sat down next to a couple of girls at the
end of the table. I have to be careful what I write now because they’ll
undoubtedly read this. although I might make a few footnotes that make it
into the edition that’s published on my death :p It became apparent after 5
seconds that they were a couple of girls from scandinavia, 15 seconds to see
it wasn’t Denmark and another minute to be sure it was Swedish. All while
trying not to listen to their conversation which would have been rude. Or
could have been rude, I really wasn’t listening. Honestly! I had to say
something though, god help me if they started talking about me, that I
couldn’t ignore, and whatever it was they were talking about was more
interesting than my beer label. So I used that classic chat up line that has
served me so well ‘which part of Swede are you from?’ :p They were impressed,
but that soon vanished with the next 2 questions, ‘Have you been to Sweden?
and ‘Do you speak Swedish?’. About as impressive as me asking someone which
part of the west midlands they come from.
Still it got us chatting and they were great girls, always laughing and
speaking swedish in a land where everyone speaks english is great for taking
the piss. The language came flooding back and I didn’t make the mistake I
made in Vietnam by saying I spoke great Swedish only to have the girl I said
it tell other Swedes I only spoke a little. Bitch! I am great! :p
They were away for four months and were about to start their trip back north
to Guinea where they would fly home a week after me. They were also planning
on leaving the next day but we were there until past midnight and drank so
much beer it seemed unlikely they would be getting up in time. I also suspect
it was my good looks and charm that made them want to stay a bit longer, and
nothing to do with my MP3 player filled with western music they’d both been
missing for three months. I staggered off to bed hoping they’d still be
around the next morning and happy that it seemed my trip had finally started!

Next day I nearly managed to get up in time, but not quite. My jet lag from
working nights at the weekend was still killing me, and I was still in that
dump. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the country but it was kind
of weird after SE Asia, with wall to wall tourists, to see only a few
‘burundis’ (white people) out and about. Still Ghanaian people would regularly
stop and chat with me, taxi drivers were quite cool, once you established the
fare. Woe betide anyone who jumped into a Ghanaian taxi without asking the
fare, as then they have you over a barrel. But a typical conversation goes:
Do you know how to get to the museum?
yes, get in
how much?
its ok lets go
how much?
I know, I know, get in, lets go!
how much?
I take you, get in!
how much?
(pause)
30,000 cedis
no, 15,000…
(pause)
ok

After a few times doing this, you just say ‘museum, I pay 15,000′. But if
you’ve never been somewhere its kinda hard to judge. Accra was ok I guess,
hardly thrilling as a capital, very low, very spread out, probably not the
best place to be sitting down doing nothing all day. I had a quiet last day
in the capital, did my laundry and packed my bag, determined to get out the
next day if it killed me.

I tried to get up early the next day and failed miserably, I was as lazy as
the guy making my shake and pancake that I ordered before starting to write
this! I was never going to get out of my dump of a hotel if I didn’t get up.
No windows, noisy fan, the shower was in a huge manmade tub you had to climb
into to have a shower, and at 208,000 cedis (£14) a night, terrible value. I
went for breakfast and then took a taxi down to Osu, which was a busier area
than I was staying in, had a pint in the Irish pub, and then went for a look
around. wow, western shops, internet cafes, pizza etc etc. Much more action
down there. Some guy stopped me to try to sell my some beads, normally I just
keep walking, but I stopped for a look. He said his name was Mark, ‘me too!’
I said, possibly as a huge mistake, because then he had me! I sat with him
while he told me Ghanaian history and how it related to the stuff he was
trying to sell. Possibly a load of rubbish but he did have some nice beads. I
bought quite a few, certainly over priced, but I made the mistake of letting
the guy befriend me and paid the price. I managed to escape before all his
friends managed to sell me more crap i didn’t need and went off for a bad
plate of noodles at a Chinese restaurant. There was no escape though and he
tracked me back down, so said we’d go for an evening beer, with him and his 2
friends. They gave me some good tips on local music to buy though and were
friendly enough. No prizes for guessing who picked up the tab though, but
beer is cheap over here.
His friends bailed and Mark took me down to the art center, closed. Walking
back up to the main strip he said he needed to get changed and did I want to
come back to his to smoke some weed. I told him no and he kept going on and
on about it. I sat in the darkened alley way with his neighbors passing by
as he changed, there was no way I was going down his tiny alley way, just him
and me. The we took a taxi up to Abaraka but I’d already been there since it
was near my hotel. Judging from the amount of local girls walking around in
very short skirts (most Ghanaian girls are quite modest) and the fact that the
guide book has it down as ‘a pick up joint’, I didn’t really fancy going into
the Waikiki club, so one beer at a street bar and I went off home.

Later the next day, much later, i had a better crack at it. The hotel was a
dump and I didn’t want to eat there. After about two hours of walking I
finally found the restaurant I was looking for. People were very friendly as
I walked around confused, saying hello and waving, nice country I thought.
The waitress at the ‘Orangery Restaurant’ was friendly too, I don’t think the
Ghanaians like to see people sitting on their own so we had a nice chat. A
group of 3, then 2, white girls came in to eat, the first whites I had seen
since I left the airport. I was slightly relieved it wasn’t just me supporting
the tourist industry! I had ‘Ghanaian’ food, ie expensive tourist crap, but I
didn’t know any better. It was getting quite late by now so I thought I’d
make an attempt to find the ‘California Hotel’ which got a better review in
my guide book. I was on the right road, the waitress told me where it was,
but I couldn’t find the bloody place. I should have asked but I couldn’t see
any building big enough to be a hotel, just a load of shacks and everywhere
was dark. people everywhere and no streetlights. (The taxi drivers pointed it
out the next day, demolished!). I had another beer and wandered home.

Africa » Ghana » Accra

Flight was ok despite being delayed by an hour or so from Amsterdam. Had to
kick a Ghanaian guy out of my window seat. which is good preparation for the
weeks ahead. Over mainland Africa you could see the desert but it was soon
swallowed up in dust and sand. the ground then just looked like a circle of
fluffy yellow, with a few clouds.
Immigration was a minor nightmare. I joined one queue out of the 5 going and
one of the guys dealing with my line left for a break shortly afterwards. An
hour and a half to get through was the longest I’d spent in line anywhere
abroad. I spent the time eavesdropping on the Swedish couple behind me as
they attempted to get in front of me in the line. fun. Once through (without
a mention of the £50 yellow fever vaccination I had had ) I grabbed my
backpack and hit the scrum of tax drivers. I didn’t have a single cedi on me
so I ignored them and went for a ATM hunt. no joy. Not surprising really as
the airport was like a deserted concrete shopping mall, the lights are on but
no one is home.
I got a taxi driver to drive me to an ATM and onwards to my hotel. the Lemon
Lodge. I knew straight away that we weren’t going in the right direction, I
might only have been in the country an hour or two but you know when the
airport is 4 km from the city the lights should be getting brighter as you
go in. it seemed like we were heading into the ghetto!! After 5 mins of
mounting concern I realized that plenty of people had seen me in the cab, the
driver insulted and laughed at someone who gave me a stupidly high quote and
was chatting to someone at the garage/ATM. I relaxed. but where the hell was
he taking me? After about 30 mins we arrived at the Golden Lemon Hotel.
Hmmmm. I got my book out relieved to be alive and unmugged and pointed out
the right place. More expensive to get there but I had a night tour.
Lemon Lodge was full so I checked in next door. What a dump for the money I
paid, although the fridge was nice. I had been working nights that weekend so
I was pretty tired. I went for a walk around though, despite it being 10pm
and pitch black outside. There were a couple of local bars but no tourists,I
bought some water and found an ATM for the future. I wanted to walk to the
main tourist area, but after wandering around for a while and nearly getting
lost the map I had didn’t make much sense so I though it best to get some
sleep.