debbieann

I last left this off in Benin, about 4 in the afternoon when we were finally done with the Police station. We had a long drive back to Accra and had two borders to cross! We slowly shed all the additional people who were with us - dropped off our Benin guide, then drove back to Togo and left our wonderful driver (Dodo) from Togo. The borders start closing at 9 /10 pm at night, so we did really need to get going. Lots of road construction was happening along the way, and somehow we had missed lunch and breakfast in all this, so we were all hungry as well. We found some food at the border crossing-plantain chips and bread. We also had a very hard time finding petrol - plenty of stations, but they were all out of petrol. The car we had left at the bank at the border w Togo was still there, just as we had left it. We had to change money at the border, because apparently the banks won't do it. Charles said the rate he got was as good as the published XE trade rate - I always thought it was a scam to change currency at the border. I also though it was unsafe to just randomly pick a stranger at the border to drive you around, but we did both and it all went perfectly fine.

The first time in Accra we stayed at Lavender Lodge, which was nice, but a little isolated for us. This time we decided to stay in Osu which is the expat part of town - it is also the part of town where you can walk to shops and restaurants. We stayed at the Penta hotel, which I thought was great. It is not western level hotel, but it was clean, though old and slightly shabby, but it was also friendly, w AC and wifi, and a restaurant and a bar - pretty much everything we needed - the room is still about $100/night, though they gave us a discount - maybe because we arrived at 11 pm and the only room left was on the second flr, no lift. I have learned in Africa it is a good policy to view a room before agreeing to stay in it.

The next day we wandered around our new neighborhood and it was great. We had Lebanese food for breakfast at Frankies and went to a GREAT grocery store called Koala - they had a huge selection of salami and cheeses and great fresh fruit and vegetables. Lots of groceries from different places in the world. We found an open pharmacy and an open bakery. I like Osu a lot. Found a great store there called Global Mamas w a nice selection of things in Ghanaian fabric and books and postcards. It was the best place for gifts I saw in all of Benin/Togo/Ghana. I also found some great juice that is freshly squeezed and made in Ghana - sort of like Odwalla called Blue Skies.

http://www.blueskies.com/page.aspx?id=13&page=93

And then for the rest of the day we were picked up by a co-worker and taken over to Herman Chinery-Hesse's house where we sat around and had great discussions about politics and religion and race. It was fascinating. You can read about him here: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/26/tech/herman-chinery-hesse-technology
It was one of the best, most enjoyable, most personal things we did in Ghana. We met his parents - his mother
was an undersecretary at the UN and she had fascinating stories to tell. A bunch of his friends came
over and there were great discussions.

Then we spent another night at Penta hotel in Osu.

The next thing we wanted to do was to go to Cape Coast to see Elmina castle. Turns out this time we had to rent a car which is about $100/day!

so you know those decisions we made about moving/travelling? well now it looks like after our VicFalls-Ghana-Ethiopia trip we will head back to Johannesburg and stay here until the end of January. We got here in March of last year, so we've spent almost a year in SA, w some detours to Uganda, Rwanda, Australia.