Mole Mole Mole!

My trip to Mole National Park, up in the North of Ghana was an adventure by every definition of the word. Here’s a breakdown of the trip!

Thursday: Planned on leaving Pentagon at 7am to get to the bus station by 7:30-8:00 to get our bus tickets. As usual, we have all gotten onto Ghana time (late for everything) and left around 7:20, and it took longer than usual to get a cab. One thing we did not count on was the incredible amount of traffic heading into Accra that morning. So, it took us over an hour to get to the bus station, which we got to at about 9:00. I had reserved tickets for a 10am bus to Tamale (a city in Northern Ghana, and the departure point for Mole) so I thought we were set. But, travel in Ghana is never so simple. Apparently, while I was on the phone with the woman who booked my 10am tickets, the 10am bus actually filled up. So, she reserved us five tickets on the 8:30 bus, but failed to tell me this small detail. There were two tickets left on the 10am bus, and there were more on a 3pm bus. We didn’t really want to split up, but decided this was the only way that we were getting there. It was decided that my friend Brittney and I would go on the earlier bus because I booked the hotel, and it was Brittney’s birthday. So, Brittney and I got situated on the bus (in a very cramped seat in the back of the bus) and, by some miracle, there were three open seats and all of my friends got onto the bus! So, we got situated for our 12 hour bus ride up to Tamale. Mind you, Ghana is about the size of Oregon, and driving the distance that we did should not have taken 12 hours, but the roads are bad so it takes much longer. The bus ride was pretty bad, but I slept a lot because I had been out until about 3am the night before. We made some friends on the bus, two American guys who are working in Ghana, and they ended up hanging out with us all weekend. By about 10pm we made it to Tamale, and got to our hotel and passed out.

Friday: We had to leave for the bus station at 7 to make sure that we got tickets on the 1:30 bus to Mole. We got the tickets no problem, and proceeded to walk around Tamale to try to find somewhere to eat. We had completely forgotten that it was Good Friday, and despite the fact that Tamale is a largely Muslim city, everything was closed. The people were also much more hostile towards us than in Accra. One of my friends made a comment about a man that was following us, and he just started yelling at us and calling us “fucking stupid oburonis”…so that was interesting. We decided to just go back to our hotel and eat at the restaurant, which was good and cheap. By 1:00 we were back at the bus station, which was PACKED. The bus was late, as usual, and we found some seats in the shade. The bus finally arrived and we piled on. As I got on, I realized that I had the same seat number as one of my friends, so I just decided to sit in another seat. When the boy who actually had the ticket for the seat I was in got on the bus, he threw a fit. He wanted me to get off the bus and take another one because there was no seat for me. But, there was no way that I was getting off that bus. I figured he could just stand for the ride, but he absolutely refused and threw a little hissy-fit. Well, one of our American friends that we met on the bus ride up gave up his seat and offered to stand so that I could sit, which was super nice of him. The bus ride was pretty terrible, four hours on dirt roads with no AC. The bus was packed with people and luggage and there was no real room to move. About half way to Mole, my friend Molly had to go to the bathroom really bad. They ended up stopping the bus and throwing Molly out the window (because all the doors were blocked) so that she could run across the street and pee in the bushes. Everyone on the bus thought that this was just the funniest thing ever. We finally got to Larabanga, a small Muslim village near Mole where we were staying and got situated at our guesthouse. The guesthouse was pretty simple- no running water, and a pit latrine (a concrete hole in the ground for the toilet). We actually ended up sleeping on the roof because the rooms were so stuffy, which was really nice, especially because the stars were so pretty.

Saturday: Woke up at about 5am to the sound of morning prayers and goats. We decided that we were going to ride bikes to get to Mole because it was only about 6k away. We left for the park around 5:45 and saw some antelopes and warthogs on the bike ride over! When we got the Mole, we decided to pay for a car to take us on the Safari instead of walking. We had an awesome driver named Abu who was dead set on us finding the elephants. The safari was really fun, and Abu let us sit on the roof of the car once we got into the park. At the beginning all we were really seeing were wart hogs and antelope, and I was pretty sure we weren’t going to see any elephants. Then we saw an elephant footprint and started trekking by foot into the bush. This search wasn’t very fruitful, but then we got a phone call saying that the elephants were at the water hole. So, we booked it over to the water hole and there were three elephants chilling in the water (and a crocodile)! It was super cool to get that close to elephants, and I got a lot of good pictures. After that we headed back to another hotel actually in Mole National Park to have lunch. It was way too hot to ride out bikes back to Larabanga, so we just chilled at the hotel all day and swam in the pool. There is an observation deck to look at another watering hole and I saw even more elephants, and these ones were actually out of the water and walking around! Around 5 we biked back to the village (which was much harder than the ride there) and got some dinner and pretty much passed out for the night.

Sunday: Woke up at 4am to get a bus back to Tamale. The bus came by 4:45 and we made it back to Tamale by 8:30 and went back to our hotel. We got bus tickets home to Accra for 5pm that day, but we decided to get a hotel room to relax in and shower. We didn’t do much, but we did go out to eat at a great Indian food restaurant down the street. Then we got back on the bus and headed back to Accra. This bus ride was possibly the most miserable bus ride of my life. They played some Twi-language movie until 1am at full volume (with the worst sound effects I have heard in my life). We drove through a huge thunder storm and past a huge fire in a town. We finally got back to Accra at 3am and got a taxi back to campus. I was glad to be back, and also glad for a great weekend up North!