13 April 2007 - 11:43
Our departure on Day 3 was somewhat delayed by our old nemesis, the typical African lack of urgency. In a somewhat inauspicious launch, our truck was chased down the street by someone from the rental agency, who informed our driver, “You’re not going to Cape Coast! You told me you were going to Cape Coast, but you’re supposed to be taking these people to Mole National Park! OK?” Our driver seemed unfazed by this revelation, a different destination than he had thought, which meant a difference of 12 hours driving time (one way) in another direction, and only requested that we stop by his house for him to pick up a change of clothes.
Then we were off! Kind of. Accra traffic was really bad – way too heavy to be supported by the two-lane road leading out of town. Once were out of town though, we made good time…until we hit the first of many road construction sites along our route. Throughout our visit, we would find that about a third of Ghana’s major roads are currently under simultaneous (and according to locals, never-ending) construction.
So we came to a halt, waiting in line for the traffic coming our way to subside before our long line of cars could proceed through the construction zone. In the meantime, we were treated to local delicacies by a mob of entrepreneurs, drawn from nearby villages by the traffic stops, who were selling all kinds of food imaginable: bananas, plantains, pineapples, coconuts (whittled to a point by a guy with a machete, who then chops the top off for you to drink the milk, after which, he splits the coconut open and hands you a chip of the husk for you to carve the meat out with), gum, fried meat pies, fried fish, fried plantains, shrimp, giant snails (live and crawling all over each other), bags of water, corn on a cob, peanut brittle, grilled meat wrapped in banana leaves, onions, foot-long mushrooms, and small cakes. There was even a guy walking around with bush meat – a dead monkey in one hand, and a civet in the other. One clown was offered to let us take pictures (for a price) with a live pangoli (kind of looks like a miniature anklosaurus) he had captured.
Eventually, the traffic cops motioned us forward, which resulted, in typical African style, in a sort of MarioKart-esque takeoff, with every car jockeying for position, swerving all over the road and shoulder, weaving in and out, and cutting each other off to gain a car length or two before settling back into stop-and-go traffic a few miles later. This scenario repeated itself over and over again throughout our trip northward, as well as throughout the return trip on an entirely different stretch of road. The upside of the periodically slow movement however, was that en route, I was introduced to, and fell in love with, one of Ghana’s greatest inventions – 25-cent ice cream in bags. I bought my first one in a road-side store, but most of the rest of my ice cream purchases were made from vendors on foot who sold them out of a plexiglass box balanced on his head.
We continued on like this for 15 hours, four hours longer than we expected, before arriving at Mole National Park in the middle of the night. Our driver had never been up to Mole, so he had no idea of where he was going, and was depending on us (and we were depending on not-altogether-accurate guide book maps) to get us there, but we eventually made it, dirty and exhausted by the trip, collapsing into bed in a hotel room in the park.
Our guide, D.K., told me that the water level in the pond was getting low because they hadn’t had rain in such a long time, and that they really needed a good rain soon. That night, he got his wish, as a giant thunderstorm rolled in and poured down rain all night long. We woke up to the sound of warthogs tossing the trashcans around in front of our hotel room, looking for a few scraps. Despite the heavy rainfall, the parched earth soaked up the water pretty well, enabling us to head out on the 100 kilometers of dirt road that would take us back towards the south and our next destination – the Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary.
