Easter Safari
2Friday, 3 May 2013 by Renee
Mole National Park (that's Mole like Mole-Ay) sits in the North of Ghana and has been one of my most anticipated trips I've been hanging out to do ever since I learnt we were moving here.
Now Ghana's tourism industry is er, very much a work in progress, and thanks to poaching West Africa sadly doesn't have quite the same variety of wildlife that eastern and southern Africa does, (no giraffes, rhinos or zebras in these parts), but the promise of seeing elephants, warthogs, antelope and monkeys in the wild was a lot to be excited about, especially for Adam and I who haven't yet been to other parts of Africa. Also, at twenty cedi for park entrance and fifteen for a three hour safari, (that's about $17.50 all up in Aussie dollars), it's probably one of the cheapest safaris in the world. So it was with much excitement that along with a bunch of friends from Accra and Tamale, the northern capital, we descended upon Mole for the Easter long weekend.
Just getting all ten of us from varying locations to Tamale was an achievement, but then how would we make the 3-6 hour trip west of Tamale to (yup 3-6 hours, never can be too sure in Ghana) to Mole? You can charter a taxi, but we'd need more than two so this was too expensive. You can take the public bus which runs once a day, but inexplicably the one to Mole often leaves quite late in the afternoon, which often means travelling in the dark, and in a country where a lot of people in rural areas choose to drive with their lights off "to conserve petrol", that isn't really an ideal scenario. Oh and there are stories of night time banditry on the Mole road. So...not really our first choice. That and the return bus, also inexplicably, leaves Mole at 4am in the morning. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? See what I mean about work-in-progress-tourism?
Anyway, our northern sistas took the task of finding a way to get there, and finally came to charter Bim's Bright Blue Bus on the basis of its fantastic colour. There were heated discussions on whether the bus was in fact blue or rather aqua, but in the interest of alliteration, it stuck. Insha'allah, Bim would take us there on Friday morning, and Insha'allah, we would survive the weekend, and Bim would drive us back on Monday. Not quite confidence-filling, but it was a fantastic colour! So they made a deal and at about 8am on Good Friday we all rendezvoused at Dani's place, including Bim, his brother Bolo and his Bright Blue Bus.
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| Adam, Mike, Courtney, Lotte and Pete, demonstrating their excitement, uneaten in-flight chicken sandwich, Northern hats, and Bim's Big Blue Bus. |
So off we set, with Bim driving extremely cautiously (like, 40km an hour-type cautiously) the whole time. Sometimes we didn't really understand we had to drive at snail's pace on decent roads, then other parts it was more self evident...
Also I noticed that any time we could see people or vehicles stopped in the distance, Bim would give Bolo a glance of suspicion and Bolo would take the cigarette lighter out of the console, I suspect as some form of protection against possible daylight bandits. What on earth they would have done with it I have no idea, but thankfully we didn't need to find out.
Anyway, after 5 hours on the road and a lunch break that blew out to two hours, we arrived at the park mid-afternoon. I had heard a variety of stories about how "basic" Mole Motel was, but having done a bit of rural travel in Ghana now, we were pleasantly suprised. Nothing fancy, but nice clean rooms situated on top of an escarpment looking west over the 484,000 ha of savanna.
Exhausted from the journey, we were thrilled that as the sun sets, you can sit and have a drink while watching over some of the watering holes and wait for the animals to arrive. It wasn't long before some of our crew spotted our first Elephants!
After an early night we were up at the crack of dawn ready for our walking safari. We didn't have to walk far before the excitement began though, as one of the more friendlier elephants was hanging out near the info centre. Huzzah!
Once we had dealt with that excitement, we met at the info centre and were assigned a guide. Adam wore his special safari shirt we had found in an Obruni Waawu (Dead White Man's Clothing - ie second hand donated clothing) stall the previous day in Tamale. He had already packed his "seedy interactive leopard print" shirt he found in Accra (the leopard print panels are furry, providing endless entertainment) but this one took the cake and also did not raise concerns about confusing and attracting the leopards. The safari was also a good chance to take our newly purchased northern-style hats for a spin. Nanna, I'm still on a look out for an African-print hat, but we've got this in the meantime!
In true Ghanaian style, our safari began with a tour through the park's worker's quarters. It was fantastic to see Pumba and his monkey friends in their natural habitat surrounded by pure water sachets!
Then we were taken for a long walk through the bush to a gravel pit. There was once a dutch man, our guide explained with a great deal of excitement, who donated a lot of money and effort, who gravelled the main road through the park. This is the pit that the gravel came from. Now the workers use the gravel to fill in the pot holes...
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| Adam looking like something out of a Hunter S. Thompson novel, nursing his water sachet (the most commonly found form of drinking water here), trying to contain his excitement over the gravel pit... |
It was during this captivating lesson that one of the gravel-pit workers pointed out that there were elephants walking through the nearby bushes...off we followed with a lot of excitement and sure enough, there they were, themselves crossing the glorious gravel pit.
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With the buzz of our first safari elephant encounter, we set off again through the Savanna...
We eventually came to a tree house overlooking one of the water holes and the salt pit which attracts a lot of nocturnal animals. For a small fee, we learnt, you can come and sleep in the tree house and wait to see some animals of the night. Sounds pretty good right?
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| Mike learning how to shoot a rifle in the tree house. We all watched nervously anticipating the awkward questions that could follow. "So, how did the last leopard in West Africa come to die?" |
Not long after we headed away from the tree house we came across a herd of kob (antelope) which were pretty cool to see in such a large group.
Figuring the elephant and antelope sightings were probably the peak of the excitement for the morning, we headed back towards the motel...only to find seven elephants hanging out in the watering hole at the base of the escarpement. We all felt like kids on Christmas morning! Despite the heat of the mid-morning sun, we sat and watched them for quite a while, amused by them fanning themselves with their ears, using there trunks like snorkels, and occasionally spraying themselves with water.
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| I like to think that in this photo, the kob and the elephant in the far left are trying to do a silly tourist pose for me... |
Our last find for the walk was a large troop of baboons hanging out at the top of the cliff. Yes troop is the collective noun for baboons, I just googled it.
With all of that excitement we headed off for breakfast and a swim in the motel pool of dubious water quality. After a restful afternoon we were ready to head out again. This time we were assigned a guide who was also named Adam.
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| Adam and Adam, or "Adam Squared" as the guide insisted |
This time we headed off on a driving safari. And by driving, I mean on top of a jeep, rather than in it. The park alters jeeps, attaching seats to the roof. Despite the lack of a roll cage, this didn't stop the drivers taking fast and sharp turns. It's like a thrill ride, death wish and safari all rolled into one! Our guide Adam was much more knowledgeable about the wildlife than our morning guide was, and we had a lot more animal encounters too.
The highlight of the whole trip was no doubt getting REALLY close to a group of male elephants, perhaps the same ones we saw earlier in the morning but this time much much closer.
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| Elephant peek-a-boo! |
This young guy below was definitely the most curious. We were told that the left tusk is used for digging up roots and trees, and the right is for fighting, so we know he lost his in an eating accident. I figure it's like losing a tooth to a boiled lolly incident. I get it little guy, sometimes you just want all that sugary goodness NOW!
But our CLOSEST encounter was the elder statesmen of the group, in the style of Son-of-Cocoa, named People's Friend Number Two. He was just ten metres away from us on foot! Our guide told us that it was ok, if they look like they're going to start charging, you just throw a rock at them and they'll get frightened off. Hmmm. I dunno, if a ten tonne creature starts charging at me I'm not confident a pebble is going to help me...
After a good twenty minutes of hanging out in the bush, they were off.
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| Elephant Buh-Bye!!! |
We all headed back to base feeling pretty chuffed with the day's achievements!
Awesome! Probably the best value for money safari on the planet.
ReplyDeleteGreat photos sis, looks like fun. If you find any more good shirts from Dead White Man's Clothing, save me one!
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