Onto Ghana
After two-and-a-half months in French-speaking countries in north and west Africa, we’re now happy to be in English-speaking Ghana, which is nice not only for that. It’s still West Africa, but you can tell here immediately that it’s more developed than Burkina Faso, which was in turn more developed than Mali. Ghana was the first West African country to gain independence 50 years ago and has managed to avoid the civil wars and other conflicts that have plagued nearby countries like Cote d’Iviore, Liberia and Sierra Leone. You can see that there are more facilities here, life is a bit more orderly, and the villages are better off.
Well, the whole reason we added Ghana to the trip in the first place is that I don’t have any space left in my passport and need to get a new one from the Australian High Commission in the capital, Accra. Since last August I’ve only been in one country (the UAE) that has Australian representation, and after more than a year in Qatar you don’t want to spend two weeks in a country that’s basically the same, only with a 30-year head start, while waiting for a new passport. So, as these full-page African visas have been piling up in the last couple of months I was wondering if I could even make it to Ghana. I had to argue a bit with the consul at the Ghanian embassy in Ouaga, who kept telling me my passport was full, but eventually he gave in and put the visa over some Mexican stamps. The border crossing went OK and so tonight we’re taking the bus from the north of the country down to Accra and hopefully I’ll be able to put my application in before the weekend.
Meanwhile, we just returned from a two-day visit to Mole National Park, which is the best wildlife park in Ghana. Aside from some more wonderful elephants, which were larger than the ones we saw in Burkina Faso, we also saw baboons and another type of monkey, two kinds of antelope, crocodiles and warthogs (which I can’t say, or type, without thinking of the Lion King: “When I was a young wart-hhhhoooooogggg!!”). We got to take a two-hour walk through the park yesterday morning and spent most of the rest of the day in the pool at the park hotel.
By the weekend we’re hoping to be on a south coast beach, which will hopefully be nice and relaxing after nearly eight weeks in West Africa. We’re also looking forward to meeting up with a bunch of the travellers we met in Mali and Burkina if we can get our schedules right.
Tags: Africa, elephants, Ghana, Travel, West Africa
Nick