On to Ghana

My African countries list now includes three entries, since we arrived in Ghana late Monday night. Monday morning, we got to the bus station around 7, as we were told. I was feeling sort of sick to my stomach, so I was worried about the trip, but luckily I didn’t have any problems. I was amazed by how nice the bus was—actually air conditioned, plush leather seats, nothing in the aisles, and it left on time. Much better than Mali’s bus services. We immediately knew we were entering a Christian nation when all of the music they played and all of the Ghanaian movies they played had a born-again Christian message that was not subtle in the slightest. Rather surreal after coming from Muslim countries. Also strange was that everything started to be in English, albeit English that is very hard to understand.

Par for the African course, however, were the two separate border crossings, one leaving Burkina and one entering Ghana, that were of course about a kilometer apart. When we got off the bus leaving Burkina, I exchanged a big wad of CFA for Ghana Cedi (1 cedi is a little less than a dollar), and in the meantime the bus pulled away without us, but luckily just to the other side of the stop.

The bus ride took 20 hours altogether, the last four of which neither Kevin nor I were feeling well. Finally, at about 4 in the morning, we arrived in Accra and got a taxi to our hotel. It’s not as nice as it must have been five years ago when my guidebook was written (unfortunately the 2008 edition came out in June of this year), but it does the trick. There was a huge spider on the wall, which Kevin killed for me, but otherwise we slept comfortably.

Unfortunately, Kevin was rather sick and bed-ridden yesterday, but he took a dose of antibiotics and today he’s doing better. Yesterday afternoon, a guy who worked at the hotel took me out to help me find a laundry place, which was much harder than it should have been. The first place we went to didn’t have a machine, only dry cleaning, and the other two places would charge about 50 bucks, wouldn’t wash women’s underwear (oh my God, toxic!), and wouldn’t have it ready until after we planned on leaving. Totally discouraged, I finally just paid the guy 30 bucks to wash it all for us by hand. Hopefully it’ll be ready and dry today, though with this humidity, who knows.

Accra has a much different feel than Burkina and Mali. It definitely has a coastal vibe and is very lush and humid. Lots of palm trees and grass, with Ghanaian high life music playing all around. Today when we were waiting an hour for a restaurant to bake us a muffin (ridiculous), a truck drove by blasting party music, the back filled with young people in identical tee-shirts. It was advertising some sort of health insurance. I never knew health insurance was such a party.

Tomorrow, we’re heading over to Busua to lounge on the beach for a few days. I don’t think we’ll have internet, so stay tuned and I’ll write back as soon as possible.