Mole National Park

One of the biggest trips people take in Ghana is to Mole, the national park in the north that boasts many different animals and safaris. I left at 6 am with two other friends from ISEP and we barely made it to the bus by 7:40. Traffic was horrendous. We hopped on and found the seats we’d be sitting in for the next 13 hours. That’s right, longer than the flight here. We got into Tamale past my bedtime only to find out that a curfew had been installed because of serious fighting and there was no way we’d catch our bus in the morning. We slept in a hostel close by and got up at 5, an hour before the curfew lifted. So of course, when we walked out onto the street, there was a policeman stationed at every intersection which was unquestionably the most organized I’ve ever seen the police here. At 6 we finally caught a taxi, made it a block and a half before we saw a bunch of people running at top speed from the intersection we were headed for. Of course, a fight had broken out between a policeman and some guys. There were baton smacks, kicks and men on the ground, but that’s all I saw before the taxi driver punched it in reverse. We took an alternate route, obviously, to the tro tro station, waited an hour and a half, and squeezed into a tro with five people sitting across and 6 rows. There were also men on top with their bikes and a very unfriendly chicken at my feet. I don’t know HOW toes look like food, but apparently mine are delicious! The ride was supposed to be four hours but we hit a few speed bumps. First, our back tire blew about ten minutes after we turned onto an endless dirt road. So we piled off, they fixed it pretty quickly, then we all piled back on. Ten minutes later, the engine starts smoking, we book it off the tro, they spend a bit more time looking at the engine, then we cautiously sit back down. We got into Damongo in the early afternoon and caught a very expensive taxi ten miles into the bush before we got to the main gate.

After sorting out our rooms, we did what anyone would do their first time in the African bush!.. went swimming in the hotel pool. We were too late for any of the safaris for the rest of the day, so we relaxed after our extremely long trip. The next morning we took a 7am walking safari around the waterholes and through some of the back parts of the park. We saw a ton of antelope, mainly Bushbuck, Waterbuck and Cob. There were Warthogs, monkeys, crocodiles and lots of ants, but none of the only animal we went to see: elephants. We got back just in time for breakfast and another dip in the pool! We overheard a group of German boys (:D heh heh heh!) talking about a canoe safari and how cool it was supposed to be, so we joined their group. There’s a river that creates one of the borders of the park and during the dry season, now, it gets incredibly low. How they thought they could fit 7 people in a slightly larger than average sized canoe was beyond me. We paddled ten minutes down the river and turned around because the river was too low, but still paid for an hour tour… ahhh African tourism. So we went back to the information center and hopped on a 3:30 driving safari. We spent two hours driving around as much of the park as possible, seeing exactly the same animals. The only cool part was that we got to ride on top of the off-roader that was driving us around! Because we still hadn’t seen any elephants, we agreed that another day was the only way.

That night, we hiked out to a tree house set up about 45 minutes from the hotel/pool/restaurant complex that we had stayed at the night before. I’m definitely not a fan of night hikes; my clumsiness is just magnified in the dark. We heard a few hyenas, saw some baboons, and had an awesome conversation so the hike was actually worth it. When we got back to the hotel in the morning, we had breakfast and signed up for another 3:30 safari. There were more monkeys running around than usual, and they were much hungrier than the other days we had sat by the pool. Out of nowhere, baboons would run up and snatch anything food-like in sight! I lost a bag of nuts, another girl lost some crackers, and Adam, the guy we were travelling with, chucked a bottle of water at one to protect his peanut butter. The afternoon was seriously more entertaining than our last safari. No elephants had been seen in the park for two days, so we had given up hope. We had dinner with the Germans laughing about the stuff I remembered and I ended up explaining things to the two I was travelling with because the boys would go off in German. It was definitely a highlight of the trip!

Our bus back to Tamale left at 4 the next morning but luckily, when we got in, we found out a man had to drive down to Kumasi in his own car and was looking for people to ride along offset the cost. SWEEEET! So we paid less than the bus fare to drive comfortably down to Kumasi, which took hours less than what the bus would have taken. We were dropped off at the bus station and grabbed a cheap bus back to Accra, getting in at about 9:30. Hopefully I’ll never have to take buses for that long again! These past few days have been catch up days, full of much needed sleep!