Saturday, July 18th.
We loaded into the van by six and headed out towards Mole
National Park. The road was great and the drive uneventful. Eric wanted me to
sit up front with him and I sat happily snapping photos out the window. We
arrived at the park by 7:30 and had to pay an entrance fee. This was our first
of several delays as the systems are slow and the people seem in no hurry. It
took a while for the park people and Timothy from GNAT to calculate the bill
for 8 foreigners (30 cedis each) and the 3 nationals (10 cedis). After that we mistakenly went to the hotel to
book a safari. While there we watched, from the cliff the hotel was situated
on, elephants bathing in the river. So we moved to the safari office. More frustration as there were a man and woman trying with Timothy and me to
calculate the cost of a two hour safari in a jeep. The jeeps hold seven people
each (on the roof!). We had picked up two young Americans and their Ghanaian guide, so now it was 8 Canadians, 2 two Americans and 4 nationals. This caused
all sorts of problems with the calculation (foreigners 20 cedis per hour and
nationals 10 cedis per hour for a safari and we were booking two hours) and we
were there for a half hour! Trying to get receipts for CTF caused even more
delay. Both times all the calculations were done by hand in ledgers. Then we had
to pay an additional 160 cedis for each jeep.
Finally we loaded up and headed out. We bumped along the red
dirt roads in two very top heavy jeeps looking for wildlife. The park is pretty
heavily forested and it was difficult to see animals and harder to take photos.
Eventually we came to a clearing where the elephants we saw from the hotel
parking lot had come out of the water and were having a mud bath. We were
allowed to climb down and take photos. A class of Ghanaian students came walking
along with an armed guide and we all stood and watched the elephants. The rest
of the safari was disappointing to me. The other participants were happy but I
guess I was spoiled by East Africa. Other than the elephants we saw waterbuck,
antelopes and a few warthogs.
After the safari we went to the hotel in the park
for lunch. They have an outdoor pool here that was full of young nubile girls
and a couple of families, all white people and two young Ghanaian men who were
having lots of fun in the water with the girls. We sat in the shade and ordered
drinks and lunch. It took over two hours to get all of us served! We were
finished before our Ghanaian guides were even fed. A green monkey came to the
pool and tried to steal food. Eric took me into a small town when he went to buy
time on his phone. Amazing place with warthogs and baboons running around town. When
we got back I jumped in the pool in my safari shorts to cool off. Then we all
loaded up and drove to Larabanga where Timothy had hired us a guide, Eddie.
First he took us just out of town to the 'mystic' rock that is about the size
of a table and placed on a cement pillar. The rock has some rather interesting
myths and legends about it but it was hard to understand the accent of the
guide and even more difficult to believe. Then we went back into town. This is where the
six hundred year old mosque is situated and where the local men are aggressive
in their 'guiding' and begging from tourists. We had heard that if you hired a
guide it alleviated some of the problem. It worked for a while as we were led
by Eddie around the mosque and he told us the history. He took us to the
miniature model mosque where we could get in and feel the coolness and dimness
of the interior. We were asked to sign a ledger and make a donation. I signed
for the team and said we would give our donation to Eddie at the van and we had
to be a little forceful to get out of the building. But as a couple of us
talked to other 'guides' we were surrounded and harassed to the point that we
needed to leave to get away. We went back to the van and drove away with Eddie.
I think Eddie was looking for more money from us but we didn't give any and we
left him at the next corner. From there we drove back to Tamale, which took an
hour and a half. When we got back I phoned Ernest and asked if he had gone to
the hotel. He said he had talked to a woman and it was all sorted out. So Diane
and I went down and talked to Abdul at the front desk. He knew about our
previous concern and we asked him if a lady had told him that GNAT had talked
to her and it was fixed up. He said no, he had not heard that. So we sat with
him and told him our concerns and our budget limits. He wanted to help us and
agreed to come down to our room rate but instead of the four rooms we had
agreed on (based on the fact that when we checked in they only had two double
rooms and gave us four singles that they said we would be billed for as two
doubles) he now wanted to charged us for six rooms. We talked and talked until
finally we gave up and phoned Ernest to tell him it had not all been sorted
out. I let Abdul talk to Ernest on the phone. After that Abdul said he would
figure out the bill while we had dinner. We had dinner as a group and when I
went to the lobby to check on the internet I found Ernest and Thomas Baafi
talking to Abdul. I went and got Diane and we all tried to sort it out.
Eventually we gave up and let them talk it out. There were three people from
the hotel all with different stories and you could see that Thomas did not like
the conflict. Finally Ernest asked us what we were prepared to pay and I told
them we were budgeted for $120 and that's all we had. So Baafi said they would
pick up the difference. The hotel wins. This hotel is more expensive than the
Coconut Grove and more that a lot of good hotels in Toronto, and it is in West
Africa! At best it is a three star hotel. Then we tried to get two receipts for
our accommodation for the week. Because we were not paying the whole bill they
would not issue them for part payment. So I told GNAT to pay the whole bill and
we would give them our share and GNAT could sign our receipt book for us.
Problem finally solved three hours later. When GNAT left Diane and I took a
couple of beers up to my room and we talked about the mess and agreed that GNAT
and Alex could figure out where the problem lied, but we were happy we had
preserved our budget. We are both glad to have each other's support on this
journey. It makes it easier for both of us and we can talk and think things
through.
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