Ghana Travel Vignettes

The fascinating human buzz pulsing through the streets of Accra showed my eyes, ears, and nose a way of life I had never seen before my first visit to Africa. The weekend travels enriched that experience of the Gold Coast country. I wrote about visiting Accra’s Central Park and meeting geckos and crocodiles, leaving me with the events of the final travel weekend.

The longest of the three trips brought me to the Volta region, and below you’ll find six short vignettes about those three days.

The City Provides

The Volta Region was our destination. Situated in Ghana’s east, the rural area includes the 1,500 Km river that gives it its name, lush and peaceful landscapes, and the border to Togo.

My roommate Jon and I started our trip to Hohoe on a Friday afternoon, continued to the nearby “highest waterfall in West Africa” on Saturday, and enjoyed an adventurous ride back down to Accra on Sunday.

Tudu Station. I can do that.

Jon had work commitments in the morning, so I volunteered to fetch our bus tickets to ensure we didn’t arrive for a sold-out ride in the afternoon.

I left the tro-tro after an arduous 35-minute ride through the capital’s stressful traffic.

I couldn’t see anything that even remotely resembled a bus station. I was stranded in a busy neighborhood I had not been to before.

My wanderings must have looked helpless enough, for a local man approached and inquired about my desired destination.

Tudu Station, I said. The ticket office for the STC bus, I added.

“Okay,” the kind man replied, “I’ll show you the way, come on!”

How nice, I thought and happily accepted his kind offer. Little did I know it wasn’t all that selfless.

My guide protected me from the hectic city, guiding me securely through the metropolitan jungle until he proudly gestured toward the bus depot, which looked like a gas station, two minutes later.

I should have anticipated what happened next. I returned from the uncomplicated ticket purchase to stare into the eyes of my kind guide. Still there, huh?

“Do you have a bit of change for me,” he cut straight to the chase, “to buy a Coke, maybe?”

200 Km in 5 Hours

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We reached Tudu Station with time to kill before the 3 p.m. departure of our bus to Hohoe.

I saw the vehicle that would soon carry us 200 Km up north and noticed it looked more fragile than its counterpart from the Cape Coast weekend.

Besides us human passengers, the driver also loaded non-breathing cargo onboard. Was that soap I glimpsed in the aisle just a few rows ahead?

Well packaged, we departed Accra at 3:10 p.m., but it wasn’t for another hour that we finally left the confines of the sprawling capital behind.