A Million Minutes in Africa

Tour de Ghana, leg 5: Mole National Park. Mole is famous in Ghana for its wildlife, and justly so, we discovered. Minutes after our arrival, we saw elephants!

We were very excited but needed to eat, although it was a little late for lunch. Fortunately, there was a restaurant on-site.  Alas, the waiter said they only had one thing available at that hour — chicken and rice. We agreed that we’d all have chicken and rice. Somehow, the waiter was very confused by our order of 6 plates of chicken and rice, one for each of the 6 people in our group. We went over it many times, but he insisted on asking each individual what their order was. Finally he brought over a supervisor, who was able to figure it out.

At dusk, four of us went for a safari (a drive in our cars through the bush with a guide). We saw crocodiles, kob (a type of antelope), bushbuck (an antelope with white markings on its body), roan antelope, green monkey, ibis, gray-headed kingfisher (with a blue stripe on its wing), African golden oriole, ground squirrel (big thrill), storks, jacana, francolin, purple glossy starlings, baboons, tse tse flies (even got bitten by some), and even more elephants!

Wowed by the safari, we decided to stay for another day. We didn’t really need to go far to see wildlife, though, because some ventured quite close to the Mole Motel, where we stayed.

Near our room, a family of warthogs ambled by. Dan was able to get pretty close to one of them.

This patas monkey (aka red monkey) checked out the contents of a trash can, then politely closed the lid when he was done.  One can do a lot with opposable thumbs.

The terrace of the motel overlooks a watering hole that the elephants use for bathing. This place is great!