Accra

We reach the coast of Africa at about 6am, just as it is starting to get light. We are high over Dakar, but to my disappointment, there's nothing to see through the haze. There's no break in the cloud cover until we finally descend below it two hours later on our final approach to Accra. There's still not a lot to see. Sixty seconds from wheels down, and I haven't seen a surfaced road, a car, or even a light. Thirty seconds to go and I finally see all three at once. Half a dozen cars on an otherwise still deserted road. The plane taxis to a stand about 100 feet from the terminal, and the last thing I see through the window before condensation fogs it over completely is dust on the engine cowling, red dirt kicked up by the reverse thrust of breaking. We are definitely not in Kansas any more Toto.

It's only 8:00am and it is only 100 feet, but we're sweating before we make it inside the terminal. Akwaaba. Welcome. I should probably be shot for making the comparison, but there's a definitely a colonial fifties feel to the terminal, with the crisp military-like uniforms of the immigration personnel, the quaint, hand-painted signs, the low ceilings, and the concrete floor. But things run pretty smoothly and efficiently—so much so that our longest delay is waiting for our last bag, which we eventually find had already been pulled off the carrousel before we reached the baggage claim area. We know that credit is going to be hard to get, so we change $6-700 into local currency, which is counted out to us in 10Ghc bills (about $10). Armed with our rolls of cash I feel like a drug dealer as we spill through the final custom check and out into the sunshine and heat again, and the very welcome sight of Alexis.

Her first task is to guide us through the gauntlet of taxi drivers. Alexis apologies that this is "the worst part of the Ghana experience—I'm always embarrassed that it is one's first introduction." We have to walk away before one of the drivers is prepared to accept the fare she is offering. She and the driver argue about directions for the entire trip. First stop is the Peace Corps office to drop off an entire bag of stuff we don't need to carry around the country. Then we are deposited at a tro-tro station from where we need to take a local tro-tro to the outskirts of the city, then a long-haul one out to Akosomobo. Street vendors in Boston and London have a sing-song way of advertising their wares. The tro-tro mates do the same, as they lean out of their window to communicate with potential fares, and just like Boston or London, I can't understand a word of it.

The smell at the long-haul station is a gag-making cocktail of things burning that are supposed to burn, things burning that are not supposed to burn, things rotting, the general aroma of heat, and of hot people in particular. The station is packed with tro-tros and their crews, passengers, and street vendors. The street vendors vary in age considerably, but not in sex. They are all women, and everything is carried on their heads. Boiled eggs stacked in neat pyramids, oranges, water, biscuits (yes, English biscuits, not American cookies), toys and even underwear are for sale on heads everywhere. The boiled egg sellers have everything they need in the bowl on their head. They can select an egg, crack it, peel it, deposit the shell in a waste bowl, deliver the egg and a little packet of seasoning, take the money and make change from another little dish all without removing the bowl from their head, and without ever looking at what they are doing.

Alexis finds the tro-tro we need, and the good news is that there is plenty of room for all of us and our luggage. The bad news is that therefore we have to wait until the tro-tro is full—however long that takes—by which time we are squeezed in like the proverbial sardines. There's no room on the floor, and "checked" bags cost extra. Not that I'd allow my toy bag to be checked, so it is on my lap. By the time we set off some twenty minutes later, the overall effect then, with two people between me and the door, my chin on my toy bag, and no room to move my feet, is one of being totally cocooned. It makes the aircraft seat seem palatial. We've been warned about how crazy the drivers are, but I have to say I did not experience this. The tro-tros are completely trashed out, the result of a million miles and a million minor skirmishes, but all the drivers we had drove expertly—no gear-crashing or heavy breaking/accelerating/steering (what Adam would call "binary pedals").

On the road for several days already, and after the long red-eye flight, we're dangerously tired, but the sensory overload keeps us vibrantly awake. Last, but by no means least, this is by far the slowest form of transport we've taken in days, but we need to get to Akosombo as quickly as possible because of the first-come-first-served reputation of the yam boat reservation system. The tro-tro mate takes fares when people offer it. Folks at the back pass their money forward through a chain of hands, and then the chain passes the change back. Wayne and Alexis, several rows back, do the same with a bottle of water for me. A woman who has been seen off by her husband has two small children with her. The smallest, probably two or three years old, falls asleep across the tro-tro mate's lap. He strokes her hair. When she starts to drool on him, he takes a rag from the back of the seat in front of him, and gently places it between her face and his pants. When he gets out to let out passengers, he passes the girl off to the person next to me, then takes her back again when he gets back on board. The tro-tro driver had barely enough time to call a water girl over before the lights changed, but even as he drove of, he turned and tossed the money into her head-basin. She didn't even turn back and she didn't check. She knew the money would be right. Crowded and hectic it may be, but there is a wonderfully comfortable feeling of family, trust, and integrity, so much so that already I'm beginning to relax about the bags stuffed in the back where we have no access or visual contact. I can tell from the amount of water in my shirt that we're dehydrating at a prodigious rate, but I dare not drink too much because I can't imagine what will happen if I need to pee, and worse, we have no idea how long the trip will take.

We're in a swirling mass of contradictory inputs but gradually, as the kilometers roll by, I start to make a little sense out of the chaos we've been passing. The first time the tro-tro pulled up to discharge passengers, the driver's mate opened the sliding side door of the van right onto a hole in the side of the road three feet deep and two feet across. I could not imagine such madness, and would certainly have dropped straight in it had it been my turn to disembark. But now I see that this was a gutter that runs down most streets in most towns and villages. Some of them have more cover than others, but they are everywhere, so people are very aware of them. The shanty town of shack-stores leaving Accra is not a shanty town, these are what pass for regular stores, the way everything is sold. The reason that there are no parking lots, no windows and no signs is not because it is a shanty town but because there are no (private) cars, it's too damned hot for glass, and there are no printing shops. In our entire time in Ghana the only printed signs we saw anywhere were for beer and mobile phone companies, who advertised in the largest towns. The heat also explains why everyone appears to be on the street. At first this too seemed either an illusion or madness, but the cramped living quarters were far hotter than being out in the open. Every village, no matter how small had huge shade-trees in their centers (mostly mangoes), and anywhere there was a shade tree there were folks hanging out under it. In smaller communities the shacks dwindle to a thatched roof on four poles and finally, for example, to a bedside table on the side of the road, with six avocados and a small bunch of plantains as the only wares. The shacks are each extremely specialized—just second-hand car hoses, or engine blocks, or bolts of cloth, or perhaps most surprising of all, new sofas, out in the open and beaten up all day every day by the sun, the dust, the exhaust fumes, and presumably the occasional downpour. The half-built structures are often not half-built, I'm just not used to considering a structure with no doors, windows, or paintwork as finished. But many of these structures turn out to be schools and there are so many children in them that I can see the full classrooms from the road. And every child is in school uniform. This is not to say that there were not half-finished structures. There were, and every few miles there were hand-made bricks laid out in the sun to dry, waiting to build more of them.

Finally, the second, long tro-tro ride is done, and we appear to be within a dozen kilometers of Akosombo. We quickly find the spot where everyone else seems to pee, and make like the natives. Meanwhile Alexis has negotiated a taxi for only about 5Ghc more than two more tro-tros would cost. An obvious win. It goes without saying that the taxi appeared to be on its last legs. Absolutely none of the instruments were working, so it was useless to read the odometer, and I thought we were going to have to get out to push it up some of the hills. But after only 15 minutes or so, we get a nice view of the famous Volta dam at Akosombo. The dam, built in 1965, created Lake Volta, the largest reservoir by surface area in the world, covering almost 3,275 square miles. As a stark indicator of the poverty level in Ghana, although 78,000 people were relocated to new townships, (along with 200,000 animals belonging to them) only 120 buildings were destroyed. All being well, the Yapei Queen will shortly carry us up the vast majority of the three hundred plus miles between here and the northern end of the lake.

Lake Volta and MV Yapei Queen

It is still more than three hours before departure time, but we are relieved to find that the yam boat is already there, and three or four dock crew are very very slowly preparing it for departure. A fork lift ferries a load out, perhaps two, then stops and the men go back to chatting. A small crowd has already gathered, clearly folks waiting to get on the boat. We drop all our gear in one place and while I sort-of keep an eye on it Wayne and Alexis go off to find the contact who took our reservation, and who Alexis has been calling, first on a weekly, then daily, and finally on an hourly basis. When they find him, and confirm that as he promised over a month ago, we indeed have a reservation, he said "you should trust Africans more." I'm already beginning to feel a little embarrassed about our attitude, though clearly Alexis has learned her behavior from direct first-hand experience. But it is already becoming clear that when folks offer to help us with our bags they are probable just being as helpful as they appear. We can't be too careful though and always decline, I hope gracefully.

With the ticket finally in our sweaty hands, we can at last relax. This was one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the whole trip. If we couldn't get on the boat it would totally change the trip. Now we're half-way to success. If the reservations in Mole also hold, we're home and dry. After that everything is just icing on the cake. Wayne, of course, goes birding. But I'm flagging, and I'm happy to just sit, read, watch.

Finally it is time to board the boat. It occurs to me that with about a dozen obruni in the crowd, all of whom are presumably perfectly able to afford the $35 first class fare, we could still be gazumped, so I urge Wayne and Alexis to press on without me, while I snap a few pictures of the rush to board.

Bradt has been so detailed on the miracle of securing of a berth that it even describes the fastest route to the third floor/first class cabin area. Sure enough, when I get up there Wayne and Alexis are still standing in the open, and other folks seem to have their cabins assigned to them. The grumpy old man who for the moment I'm assuming is the captain finally unlocks a last cabin, disappears inside, reappears with an armful of what looks like personal effects and trash, throws a bucketful of disinfectant (I'm not kidding) through the open door, then turns and hands us the key. We take a deep breath, squeeze into the tiny space long enough to dump our packs on the bunks, open the porthole wide, and then escape back to the fresh air.

Meanwhile the remaining obruni have all floated to the top deck. Clearly the old-farts have the cabins (38.00 Ghc), and the twenty-somethings (including our own) are planning to camp out on the deck. We check out the digs. The bridge is obviously at the front, and runs the width of the boat. Behind it are the cabins, and between them is the windowless sweatbox which serves as a shower. A gangway runs down both sides. At the back is an open area with benches and lockers. Downstairs on the second deck is a canteen. Two women are stirring huge pots of something that smells pretty good in a galley that is so small that there's only just enough room for each of them to stand. The canteen occupies the whole of the rest of the space, and doubles as second-class accommodation (8.00 Ghc)—after eating, the tables are beds, as are the luggage racks above them. The bottom deck seems to be taken up by the engine room and then stretching out for the front two-thirds of the boat is the open cargo hold. Out here, stacked two-high, one deep and a dozen across, are three-dimensional pallets. On the way back, the proverbial yams will be carefully stacked up in these, by hand (which explains why it takes twice as long for the return trip). On the way up they constitute third-class accommodation (2.00 Ghc). About half these "berths" are occupied, and two or three of them are soon turned into stores where one can by trinkets, snacks, flip-flops and so on.

An hour goes by, and finally we slip away from the dock. The breeze is very welcome and it feels good to know we do not have to queue, squeeze or haggle for the next 30 hours or so. And given that it feels like we've been doing that since we left Rhode Island 30 hours before, it is a very relaxing thought too. Clearly it is beer time. Although it has not had time to cool, there is beer. As is the custom, it is served with the cap lifted then pushed back on to discourage bug drinking and drowning parties although the breeze and distance from the coast have created a rather pleasant bug-free zone. By the time the first beer is down, it is getting dark, and we're ready to try the canteen. The groundnut stew and rice balls that Alexis reappears with are delicious, though the lump of "beef" floating in it seems to come from a very remote and bony part of the cow. Another beer and we're ready for bed, even though it is probably only around 7pm.

We never did quite figure out how this worked, but the youngest of the passengers were two German couples in their early twenties, who seemed to have one motorbike between them. One of the guys had hankerchief/rags wrapped loosely around his hands, which for a long time I thought was an afectation, but late in the evening he finally removed them in the comfort of the dark and the cool night air, to reveal the worst case of sun-burn I think I've ever seen. The scariest part was not the color but how swollen his hands were. The fat sausages his fingers had become were a stark contrast to the rest of his lanky structure. No way could he make a fist, even if he was crazy enough to try. Wayne and I glanced at each other and he went back to the cabin to retrieve suntan lotion. The following morning I remembered that I'd salvaged handcream from the flight freebie bag and when I produced it Wayne rummaged around in his pack and pulled out an identical little tube. We let the patient take one more long squirt of the real thing, then gave him the freebies.

Alexis had a much more interesting night than we did in our air-conditioned splendor. She contends with the late-night revelries of the Germans, who after at first seeming to blanche at the price of the beer (about $1.25 for a 22 ounce bottle) now seem intent on drinking the cellar dry. Then there was the hydrant that she was sleeping under, which mysteriously started to deluge her in water (nobody wanted to ask where it had originated) and finally of course the sun came up a couple of hours too early.

We wake up to a view of nothingness. But the nothingness is relaxing, with a monochromatic glare and haze which make it impossible to judge distance. Sometimes the nothingness contains the low lying shoreline, sometimes there is a canoe, and often there are floats (plastic bottles and boxes that at first look like garbage) marking fishermen's traps. Although the surface area of the lake may be impressive, the depth is not. The next most plentiful sight is the tops of dead trees, silent witness to what once was.

We have not stopped all night, but around 8:40am we reach Kete-Krachi, the first stop and one of the biggest townships. We are there an hour and a half. Most of the six stops we make throughout the day are at places which are not even marked on the map. In fact that is one of the reasons for the yam boat—these communities are so remote there is no road to them.

All thumbnails like this can be clicked on to enlarge the image. Anything marked as Copyright Wayne R Munns, or other "decorative" pieces cannot.

When I follow the gangway to the front, to stand beside the bridge, I discover that two of our fellow travelers, a young woman Wayne and I have already dubbed Bo Derek and her mother are sitting inside the bridge talking to the crew. The old guy who had cleaned out our room is at the helm, and by far the youngest member of the crew in bare feet, shorts and a t-shirt is sitting talking to Bo Derek. He's the most chatty, and has by far the best English. His name is Abdulai Seini. I ask him how many are in the crew (five deck hands, three engineers, one fork-lift driver and himself—the two cooks do not count apparently) and only then realize that he is in fact the captain. The older guy is the chief mate. Captain Seini explains that Volta Lake Transport operates every boat on the lake, including the Yeji ferry which we're planning to take the following morning. He warns us that it now only runs once a day, and takes longer than normal because "one engine is broken." Most of the other boats in the fleet are barges, and that is where most of the money is made. This one is more-or-less a good-will gesture, which barely breaks even. The ferry is even worse, and sometimes runs at a loss!

We spend most of the day in and around the bridge, where it is cool, and there is a view. I notice that most members of the crew come up at some time or other, and they all take a turn at the wheel. At one point the captain who has stepped out of the bridge to sit with us, excuses himself for a moment, and without saying a word to the helmsman, casually makes about a 45 degree correction to our heading and then comes back. His relaxed attitude—to his crew, to us trampling all over the bridge, and even to all the second-class (white) passengers hanging out on the first-class deck—made a great impression on me and helped markedly in making this segment of the trip more peaceful and rewarding than we dared hope for.

The captain is clearly a well-educated and successful young man. We discover over the course of the day that he owns a car, his own house, and he has power and a TV set (all of which, in my experience, put him in the top few percent of the population). The only other person who comes close is our driver. Both of these men live in or close to Accra (otherwise most of this would not be possible no matter how much money they made). Captain Seini takes the trouble to collect contact details both for Alexis and for Bo Derek. I asked him if it was possible to go ashore when we stopped, and curiously, though he didn't elaborate he said it was too dangerous. I assume it was for innocent reasons to do with the fork-lift and loading and unloading of cargo. He did say he would let me know if we stopped somewhere where it was okay, and he was good to his word, so we were able to disembark at one of the smaller ports of call which was serendipitous because in those five or ten minutes I took some of my favorite shots from the whole trip.

Bo Derek (who—go figure—is actually from Cape Cod, Massachusetts) is visiting her mother who has lived in Ghana for seven years, and wanted to do this boat trip for a good portion of this time. Mother has become remarkably Ghanaian, and it gives me pause to examine how uptight I really am when I'm staggered to discover that although they've dreamed of this trip for years, and plan to end up in Mole like us, they have no idea of how to get there once we get off the boat. I can't imagine such a thing, and as I write these notes several months later, I'm still chewing on the concept.

At one port we're pulling away from the beachhead before a woman (with her infant juggling along on her back) comes running up and jumps aboard. It seems inconceivable, with a piece of transport as unreliable as this, and with it running just once a week in each direction, that one would cut it that finely, but there she was cool as a cucumber. Chatting away with her friends one minute, leaping onto the boat the next. At another stop we watch a woman being paddled across the lake to meet the boat. It is about a mile each way, and two paddlers are still pulling hard as their canoe beaches close to the ship. I point this out to the captain. "Paddling does not use fuel—you just need some heavy food." As we watched, the paddlers turned and headed back across the lake at nearly the same pace as they'd used when I thought they were in a hurry.

If you thought there was nothing to look at during the day, as the sun went down the second night a whole new dimension was introduced. There are absolutely no lights: no navigation buoys, no stars, no light houses, no lights on shore. Once I saw what looked like a camp fire off in the distance, but that hardly counts as a reliable navigation device. It is completely, utterly black, we can't see our noses in front of our bows. There is a search light on the roof of the bridge, and a handle inside allows Captain Seini to pierce the gloom every fifteen minutes or so. The beam reflects back off a steady cloud of bats heading west, but what he's really watching out for are the trees. During the night Wayne and I are both wakened by the gentle sway and graunching noise as the boat finds one he missed.

Yeji

As predicted by Bradt, Yeji is uninspiring. We are surrounded by young men trying to help us find a hotel. One of them is quite affronted when we cross-check his directions with a random street vendor. Somehow we have stepped back two or three hundred years. There is no street lighting other than the occasional naked flame of a brazier or torch but the narrow street is backed on each side with street vendors selling anything you wanted, except the water and beer we actually sought. The street is packed with vendors, young inhabitants on mopeds and bicycles. Despite the fact that we're wearing headlamps, one of these comes careening straight for us, and even as we take last minute evasive action he finally crash-lands in front of us to avoid the collision. His companion, a young woman who is still sitting on the pannier when her ass hits the ground, is not impressed.

The Volta Hotel is by all accounts one of the better establishments but it is still extremely rustic, with a shared bucket bathroom and shower. We're so pleased we took the captain's advice and showered before disembarking. It was a sweat box, but at least it had running water. We dump out gear and head off in search of beer. The first spot is shut already, but the next one sells us a couple of rounds of warm beer. The German from one of the other cabins on the Yapei Queen finds us there and invites himself to join our table. Turns out to be some sort of lawyer, and he's just as boring as his professional rap predicts. Again the rain gutters are two feet across and down, with the occasional slab creating a bridge across it. After two beers and nothing to eat all day except a few mouthfuls of gorp, "mind the gap" takes on new meaning. We return to our rooms. We've beaten the price down from 28 cedis to 20. There's room to use the portable, freestanding mosquito nets we had brought so we do. A hot and sweaty night took on a whole new meaning.

In the morning the hotelier is just as friendly as everyone else we've met, and happily agrees to boil some water Alexis gives him so we can make coffee, and he remembers the price we agreed for the rooms. Wayne and Alexis, the coffee fiends, never travel without their mugs, but I have to saw the bottom off a used water bottle to create mine. Just as we're ready to drink, another youth appears, and explains that although the ferry is supposed to go at 9am, today is market day and it will probably take at least an hour more than that to load. Then we know, and he confirms, that it will take two hours to cross (because the captain told us one engine is out). Of course he also has good news. Because this is market day, another local boat is also going to make the trip, charges a similar price, and leaves at 7:30—20 minutes from now. We try to debate the issue in private, but eventually agree that since we're already ready, there's no harm in looking. So we hurriedly finish the precious coffee, then the guy follows/takes us all the way down to the lake.

The Yeji Ferry

Sure enough, there is a crowd of people milling about already, and just off-shore a large open canoe-barge. We're still skeptical, each for our different reasons. I'm concerned that with all the white people trying to basically run the same route, how come there as so few of them here? None. But the whole point of this boat is to get a head start on the ferry, so that we can secure a place on the bus to Tamale theoretically waiting for us on the opposite shore. The price the guide told us also turns out to accurate, once the boat operator charges for Wayne's and my packs. Like the tro-tros before, and many transports to come, we have to pay twice, once for our bodies and again for our luggage.

I feel badly for the young guys who have tried to help us. I'm normally so trusting, but I can't help be skeptical of their advice, or their motives for providing it. The morning guy suggests that this is a public service he's volunteered for as part of his pre-university obligations. If this is true I feel worse at our behavior. He certainly did not lead us astray, and he did not ask for a tip. Captain Seini had said something about these guys, but I haven't been able to figure out whether we were supposed to use them or avoid them.

We wade out to the boat. The porters are impressed at the weight of my bag, but have no trouble throwing it up onto the pile in the bow. We are told not to sit where we've chosen, but instead to move right to the front of the boat—sitting on our luggage. An absolutely prime spot, high above the other passengers, where we can watch the rest of the loading process. Which as usual delays the departure by an hour or so. Several times when the boat seems to be loaded to the gunnels something appears to make us say "no way that can come too" but on it comes. Despite the apparent chaos, stuff gets done. As the boat gets heavier, they keep needing to push it further from shore to prevent it grounding, and when it does they just rustle up more and more men to push it off the bottom again. Finally, when there is absolutely no more room, the Germans arrive with their motorcycle. The machine is hoisted by three porters, who wade out to the boat and heave it over the side, where the nearest passengers catch it and make room for it.

Everything seems totally cash-based, so the last thing the boat owner does before boarding is to pay anyone and everyone who helped load the boat and push it around. With one final shove we're pushed off the bottom and are on our way. Sitting backwards, we watch the shoreline recede, and the small crowd disburse. Bo Derek and her mother are sitting about five rows back. It's way too loud to call her, but eventually I catch her attention, and use sign language to persuade her to take our picture. She did a great job.

Apart from losing the blood circulation in my ass, and worse, my beloved polarizer choosing this moment of zero recovery options to unscrew itself and dive straight into the water, it was a splendid and mercifully hazard-free trip. So close to the water, so close to the locals going about their business, so close to the birds living in the floating grasses and tree tops, good breeze. As predicted, the trip takes almost exactly 45 minutes. Seven foreigners including us, about 107 locals, a couple of hundred kilos of luggage plus the motorcycle, in a big open canoe-barge marked as holding a maximum of 91 passengers. Alexis' concerns about lack of sea-worthiness suddenly seem by far the most practical, immediate and real.

The Tamale Bus

At the other side, the bus is already waiting and there is a mad scramble over the side of the boat, and into the bus. It takes two hours to load the bus, but it finally leaves just after 11am. The road is rough, but not as rough as we'd been led to believe. Locals come out in every village, and do a stiff trade in purwata. As on the boat, garbage is tossed overboard at regular intervals. They also sell oranges, with the zest carefully carved away, but not the pith. Since they don't eat the orange, they just suck the juice out just as they do water from the purwata sacks, this probably allows the orange to be crushed up like the sack, but still minimize germs and stickiness.

It is becoming clear that the street vendors are not just opportunists out to rip off the tourists. For one thing, there are not nearly enough tourists to sustain even their low requirements—we're outnumbered about 10 to 1—but also everyone including the driver makes use of them. It's actually a very practical way of life if you think about it. You don't need to carry anything, you buy it as you need it and when you are finished, toss whatever is left in your hands. Don't need it, don't buy it; finished with it, toss it. Plus the water is a lot colder than it would be if you'd been nursing it for hours before you were ready to drink it, like ours. At one of these stops Wayne and Alexis buy fried cheese, which I found interesting but they loved, sparking a remarkably fruitless quest to find more of it wherever we went. Market vendors had alternately never hear of it, or it was the wrong time of day, the wrong day of the week or the wrong part of the country.

On the bus a preacher of some kind got up and started a speech/sermon/sales pitch. It was not in English, but was animated enough that he got some folks to answer him, "gospel-style." Then he got out several types of snake oil (one seemed to be a liquid, the other pills) and he sold several of each. Of course the bus was way too crowded for him to move around, so the transaction was carried out as in the tro-tro, with the item, the cash, and the change being passed hand-to-hand up and down the entire length of the bus.

After an hour or two, the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere. There was a lot of that to chose from, but in this particular spot there was scrubby woodland on both sides of the road. Most people got off the bus, and the men crossed the road. Everyone took a tree, and even the men squated, which seemed a little curious, but there we are. Everyone reboarded and off we went again. We were not stopped for more than five minutes.

Taxi to Mole—or not

We pull into Tamale around 2pm. It is teeming with people and traffic. When the bus stops to let some folks off, a fellow passenger suggests that since we've missed the Mole bus, we could/should get off here, and within 10 to 15 minutes he'd return with a van and he would be happy to drive us there. We've hooked up with Bo Derek and her mother and agreed to share the cost if that allows us to get there today instead of delaying 24 hours. The bus driver tells us to get back on the bus. We do. Ten minutes and 200 yards later, we arrive in the bus depot. Again, wall-to-wall people and busses. But our guide shows us the Mole bus, which is still there. Alexis and Wayne go off to see if there are tickets. There are not. No surprise the bus is overloaded to crushing point. They set off again, and five minutes later return with a taxi deal—70 Ghc for all of us and Alexis will ride in the trunk (it's a station-wagon) We pile everything in and set off. Two minutes later we pull into a gas station and the driver needs to borrow 30 Ghc to buy gas. Thirty minutes later we stop again, and buy Voltic water, and he borrows another 1 Ghc to buy cookies. Again this seems to be how everyone travels, carrying nothing and buying what they need along the way.

Half way to Mole the road to Damongo branches off and turns to dirt. The driver makes no attempt to slow down. The dust billows through the car, but it's way to hot to even think about closing the windows. Since I'm closest to the window, I take one for the team by acting as a sort of one-man filter. Little by little the banging noises which sound to me like the suspension bottoming out get worse and worse. Finally this is joined by the smell of expensively hot rubber permeates the car and we stop. The driver spends a few minutes wiping oil around and tightening and loosening a few bolts. Convinced he's solved the problem we pile back in, but still he doesn't slow down. We pass through Damongo and are about half way to Larabanga when a much more serious and continuous banging starts up. This time the driver removes the front wheel, and does some more tinkering. Wayne and I wile away the time taking pictures of the orchids growing beside the road, and he takes one of the road growing on me. I wiped some off my forehead for contrast.

The driver announces that the car is fixed again, but since we were all certain that the noise was coming from the back, we are extremely skeptical, and refuse to get in. Instead we surround the car and have him try to move forward while we watch. Wayne reports that as the car moves forward, his (rear) wheel does not move.

We feel bad, but there is nothing we can do to help him, and at this point there is nothing further he can do to help us. We pay him the balance of his money—it's the least we can do, and we're nearly there, only 5 or 10 miles short of the park. We barely have time to gather our belongings at the side of the road when a motorcycle comes over the brow of the hill. Never ones to miss any kind of an opportunity, the rider stops and offers Alexis a lift. If all went according to plan he'd have proposed marriage to her by the time they got to town. But he's a good sport and when Alexis and everyone else in chorus decline his generous offer, instead he volunteers to get help in Larabanga. He's only been gone about a minute when a new Land Cruiser hoves into view. The driver pulls over and gets out.

Savior: What is the trouble?
Chorus: All turn silently to look at the taxi, then turn back.
Savior: Where are you going?
Chorus: Mole
Savior: All of you were in that taxi?
Chorus: Uhuh. (Is this a trick question?)
Savior: Then you better get in

So the black guy stops and volunteers to load five obrunis into not just the back of his truck, but into the leather-clad interior of his new 4x4. I ask him if he was going to Mole and he says "I am now." We talk about that for a few minutes than he says "You are guests in my country. It is important that you enjoy your visit, and that you are safe. This is how I hope you will think of Ghana when you get home."

The Land Cruiser is air conditioned, and much more suited to the road. "You were crazy to hire a taxi out here. Those cars are just not built for these roads." He makes a good point, but a) we nearly made it b) surely that is for the taxi driver to know, not us. Besides, if he'd just driven more slowly he'd have done so much better. Meanwhile I can't stop thinking about said taxi driver, who is 100 miles from home, apparently penniless except for the 40 Ghc we give him for the rest of the fare, and clearly incapable of moving without some sort of rescue service. Brandt: "If time is an issue, consider taking a taxi to Mole. Extravagant, perhaps, but it takes approximately two and a half hours so you could be in Mole in time to see the animals at dusk. Be warned—it is seriously bumpy and dusty and you'll get filthy, but it is worth it if time is tight." That's after they just advised using a 4x4 or 2x2 with good ground clearance. In any case, they were not kidding.