We're Ghana Win The Cup!

Kumasi is the second largest city in Ghana, and the old capital of the Ashanti Kingdom, which was a nice enough place, but nothing really special. I walked around for a few days, but in all honesty I spent quite a few hours at a local bar, watching football as the World Cup has now started. One morning I got up early to catch some minibuses to the nearby Lake Bosumtwi, I arrived in a small village then had to walk for a few kilometres before I arrived at the guesthouse. This was a really nice quiet spot, and between world cup matches I walked around the hills and villages surrounding the crater lake. I did struggle to catch some of the games though due to poor reception, so when I met Quentin and Anna, a French/Swedish couple living in Ghana and found out they’d be driving back to Kumasi the next morning, I more than gladly accepted their kind offer of a lift.

Back in Kumasi, another full day of football awaited, and you might be able to see a pattern in how this blog will pan out for the next month or so. My next destination Cape Coast was a roughly five hours south, so I needed to get up early once more, in order to arrive before the first match of the day. Cape Coast is a really pretty and charming town with loads of colonial charm but also a sad history as this was once the largest slave trading port in West Africa. I have been here almost a week now, most days there are three World Cup games on, and I have now got it down to a pretty good routine of getting up early walking around, doing sightseeing between matches and enjoying a few beers throughout. Two of the main sights I visited were the castles of Cape Coast and nearby Elmina.

The first building on the sight of the Cape Coast Castle was actually a timber lodge built by the Swedish, but later converted into a much larger fort and castle by the Portuguese, Dutch and lastly the British. It is an impressive structure on the rugged coastline, but as mentioned it’s history is tragic as it’s main purpose was to hold thousands of slaves captive before their treacherous Atlantic crossing. Elmina Castle is located in the neighbouring town of Elmina, which is smaller but perhaps even more charming. The castle is the oldest European building in Sub Saharan Africa, built by the Portuguese in 1482, but later taken and expanded by the Dutch. Again it was so sad to take the tour, walking around unventilated dark rooms originally built to store gold, ivory and other goods, but converted to cramped dungeons for human cargo when that became the more profitable export. In other news I can tell you I have been robbed again, surprise, surprise! This time I was walking home late at night with a newly found friend when two guys jumped me, one of the held me from behind, with a knife to my throat whilst his friend emptied my pockets of the cash I had on me. I was terrified to move in case he slipped with his grip of his blade, but once they had run off I made the walk back to the hostel. The girl I was with said she couldn’t get home so late at night, and I knew there were empty dorm beds where I was staying, so she came back there to sleep.

Once we were back she started yelling and causing a scene, waking the other poor sleeping guests, I felt bad but she wouldn’t stop so I went to get a security guard and he helped me get her out of there. It was only much later I realised my small backpack was open, and my newly retrieved wad of 2000 Ghanaian Cedis (roughly $400) was gone. The more I think of the situation I’m pretty sure she was in on the first robbery as well, but there’s not much I can do and I can only be happy I wasn’t injured and that I only lost cash and not something harder to replace like my passport or credit cards.

So FaSo Good

Bobo-Dioulasso is the second largest city in Burkina Faso and I spent a few days exploring it and its surroundings. One surprising factor was that for the first time really since Morocco I experienced hustlers, trying to charge you to visit places and even to enter certain neighbourhoods. Whilst I can kind of understand this phenomenon in the Moroccan sights with hordes of tourists everywhere, it was strange to find it here, as I was the only tourist as far as I could tell. As a result I didn’t visit the old quarters or the Grand Mosque built out of mud, but I saw it from outside and it was under construction anyway. One day I visited the nearby village of Koro, where the adobe structures are all built up on a hill, but to be honest it wasn’t that interesting and once more there were people squeezing you for money.

I did have a couple of good nights out though and saw an interesting live concert, with the talented musicians playing traditional wooden instruments. The morning after I got on a bus taking me to the capital Ouagadougou. Since a very young age I have been interested in maps and world geography (rumour has it my first word was Reykjavík) and one of my all-time favourite capitals has to be Ouagadougou, it’s just such a wonderful name that rolls of your tongue, the kind of name that if it were made up in a fictional novel would probably be accused of being too racist. When I arrived, I once again found cheap refuge at a Christian location this time in connection with the large cathedral. That would probably be my top travel tip for budget accommodation in these parts of the world, as hostels don’t really exist the best choice is often these religious institutions usually located in good central locations, the only downside can be that they have early curfews and make you feel like a terrible person for arriving late and intoxicated.

In Ouagadougou I met up with Marcus, a friend of a friend from back home, who has been living here for almost a year now with his wife who works for the Swedish Embassy. Although the city didn’t have very much to offer it was a lot more developed than I had expected, Marcus was a great guide driving me around all the different parts and introducing me to his wife and some of his expat friends, as an extra bonus he also gave me five boxes of snus, so as you can imagine I was over the moon. On my last evening I met up briefly with Irene and David again before getting up early the next morning to catch the long bus south across the Ghanaian border all the way to the town of Kumasi. The journey and border crossings were hassle free, it took almost 20 hours though, and once I arrived in the wee hours of the morning it took a while to find a place that was open, but in the end I managed to find a cheap lodge to crash at.

Trainy Season

Whilst my Ghanaian visa was being finalised I decided to visit the nearby and more relaxed town of Grand Bassam by the beach. Maybe I’ve been spoilt by beaches lately but this didn’t quite measure up to the standards I have come to expect, the turbulent ocean made it unsafe for swimming and a lot of debris and trash had washed up on the sands, also the rainy season didn’t make matters better and the colonial part of town was quite dull. The most interesting part would be the lighthouse which was pretty but oddly far away from the coast. After a couple of days I could head back to Abidjan where my visa had been approved and the next morning I boarded the train heading through the entire country all the way north to Burkina Faso.

I do love travelling by rail and though I had expected the journey to be slow I hadn’t anticipated quite so many stops and for such long periods of time. People were stocking up on all kinds of fruits, vegetables and various other food products along the way, and soon the floor of the train was barely visible, meaning one had to sit with your knees almost up to your chin by the end of it. After roughly 26 hours I had passed through both immigrations, taking me into the first landlocked country of this trip and finally arrived in the small Burkinabé town of Banfora. I figured a couple more hours of travel wouldn’t hurt and decided to make my way to Sindou. However there was no transport until later in the evening, so I killed a few hours walking around in the sweaty markets with all of my luggage before I could squeeze into a minibus.

It was quite remarkable how pretty much the whole time since I Abidjan I had seen nothing but different shades of green forests and fields and then suddenly when we reached the small village of Sindou, these giant, brown, sandstone peaks jut straight out of the ground for miles on end. I watched the sunset, had a much needed shower and dinner before I could finally lay my head down at a cute “campement” with mud huts and open air showers. The following day I spent hours getting lost and climbing around the stunning rock formations and then a couple more hours trying to hitch a ride back to Banfora seeing as all official transport had left early in the morning. There was hardly any traffic, but eventually a car stopped and they agreed to take me for a reasonable fee.

The next morning I met up with Patrice, a Rastafarian guide who drove me on his scooter to the nearby Dômes de Fabedougou. These domes were similar to the Sindou Peaks, but smaller and rounder and not covering as large of an area, they did provide a nice view of the rice paddies and sugarcane fields below before we drove on to Karfiguéla Waterfalls. The cascades weren’t so powerful at the moment as rainy season hasn’t quite started yet up here, however it was nice to cool off in the natural pools. After this I decided to keep moving and to my surprise found a very fancy bus heading to Bobo-Dioulasso.