My Trip to Northern Ghana- Tamale and Mole

Our 10:30am bus left Kumasi on time and we were off to Tamale. No really exciting stops on the way up, except the Mandatory STC Stops. At the one we visited I found a new yummy snack like Pringles called Kracks.

As the bus moved along the road the lay of the land changed from green rolling hills to dusty plains. It was interesting to see the change in architecture. The south has more churches, while the north has more mosques.



We had heard that the trip could take anywhere between 5 hours and 10 hours. I decided to say 8 hours just so I didn’t get my hopes up too high. When we pulled into Tamale around 6:00pm I realized I was on target.

The most excited thing I noticed about Tamale, and was unable to get a good picture, were the bicycle lanes.

Sidewalks in Ghana are hard to come by, so the bicycle lane was a great surprise. I had never seen so many bicycles in my life being ridden to and from everywhere. I also enjoyed seeing motorbikes with woman in traditional clothing wearing….helmets! (helmets are also rare here). It was exciting to see Tamale in full swing on a Saturday night.

Jessie, Betsy, and I checked in to the Catholic Guest House, which was hosting a wedding reception at the time.

It was packed with people and music was playing outdoors. We dropped out things in our rooms and headed out to find a place to eat. After giving up on a place that we thought we could locate we settled for a restaurant at a local lodge called the Jungle Bar. It had a neat atmosphere and a decent menu for meat eaters, but since the cook was unwilling to create a vegetarian pizza without cheese I had to have a cheese burger without a burger or cheese---which was a bun, lettuce, tomato, and a squirt of mustard…for the same price as a burger.

Needless to say I was still hungry after dinner.

We returned to the guesthouse (cute bathroom)

and passed out. We woke up on Sunday morning (Feb 8th- my 29th birthday) hoping to find a restaurant serving breakfast after an hour and ½ of traveling to five different restaurants from our guide it was obvious that Sunday mornings in the North are just like Sunday mornings in the South- closed for church. We finally took a cab to a fancy hotel and asked them to serve us, although it was obvious there kitchen was closed. They whipped up the standard hotel breakfast- eggs, toast, and tea. I had four slices of toast and water. We visited an Internet café that was open. After browsing for one hour we caught our 2pm Metro Mass bus to Mole.

I had never been on a Metro Mass bus before. It was more or less like a nicer and larger tro-tro. People buy tickets for seats, but they also pick up people that are welcome to stand in the aisle. I was sat between Betsy and Jessie on the three-seater side. The dry heat was almost unbearable, but luckily when the bus moved it cooled off quite a bit due to the wind through the open windows. Our bus made plenty of stops to let people off and on throughout the day, but we finally arrived to Mole National Park around sunset (6:30pm).

The bus driver, conductor (takes the tickets- acts like a “mate” from a tro-tro), Jessie, Betsy, another obruni girl, and myself were the only ones that were on this 60 or so passenger bus when it let off at the Mole Motel.

We checked in and headed strait out to a table near the poolside to eat a large meal. I befriended the other obruni from the bus. Her name was Emma and she hailed from England. She was on her last week of her teacher, volunteering program in a Ghanaian town of Walewale in Northern Ghana. This was her final vacation before she returned home. It was nice to make a new friend on my birthday.
I had a plate of chips (French fries) and pasta.

Then Jessie and Betsy gave me birthday presents. Jessie bought my dinner (which was so nice) and gave me a travel size package of Kleenex (really fancy and useful here). Betsy wrote me a story in a Ghanaian exercise book (so sweet) and gave me a 7.50 phone card.

I was so happy that my presents were so thoughtful and that I didn’t have to carry in my stuff on this trip!

Here are Jessie, myself, Betsy, and our new friend Emma.

Our room at the Mole Motel was nice and large and once we opened the countless windows and put the fan on high the dry heat was bearable. I slept like a rock.


The following morning we woke up for the 7am safari walk. We headed up a hill to the park headquarters and met our guide, James. There were so many other obrunis it was very strange. I decided that Mole is like the obruni’s pilgrimage…our Ghanaian Mecca. We didn’t have to walk 100 feet to see the first elephant. He was standing in the trees directly behind the park office. I was amazed and so were the 30+ oburnis standing nearby. After gazing in awe for a few moments we started our hike. After walking for 5 minutes we came across another elephant. It was crazy to be so close to an elephant just doing its daily routine.

We were only gone about 2 hours and saw countless animals. It was a fun hike.



I also got to step in an elephant track...how cool.

After the morning hike Betsy, Emma, Jessie, and I got breakfast and then laid out by the pool for hours. It was funny because the motel is on top of a large hill that looks down onto three pools of water. So at various times you could gaze out and see elephants drinking and swimming in the pool of water.


As we sat near the pool we also got other visitors- warthogs. They just wondered around and didn’t want to have anything to do with the humans.



Jessie and I made the 3:30pm safari walk with our same guide, James. On our walk we saw even more elephants- 4 at one time!

I took a great video of them. It was so spectacular.



The night ended with dinner with Emma and goodbyes since she left the next morning at 4am. It was a great day- new friend, old friends, countless wild life, and lounging.

The next morning Jessie and I were eating our standard breakfast before a tour we planned, when a baboon started to head our way.

He all of a sudden jumped on our table, knocked over the milk (or evaporated milk…which is the milk of choice here),

jumped off the table, ran to another table of people, stole some bread, and ran away.

It all happened so fast. I did my best to capture it in snap shots. My friend Laura had been a month before and had to chase down a baboon that had stolen her bag with food and cash. The food was taken, but he left her the money.

After the eventful breakfast Jessie, Betsy, and I hopped in a SUV with our guide (the bartender at the motel as well) Hasan,

his friend/coworker Jared, and the driver. We headed to Larabanga, the town just on the outskirts of the park. Here we picked up another guide, it is part of the deal, and headed to a large stone in the middle of an open area. This stone has a mystic story behind it, but I still cannot tell you it, because I really never understood. I think the founder or Larabanga stood near that stone and through a spear. Where the spear landed is where they have the well-known Larabanga Mosque. The stone is large, but supposedly people have moved it, but it always end up back in the same spot.


After seeing this stone we visited the Larabanga Mosque. It is by far my favorite building in Ghana. It is a beautiful white and black mud- and- thatch mosque. The age of the mosque is still in question. Some say 13th century, others say 1421, and some say1643. So I don’t know. But it is old, it is beautiful, and it is really interesting.



Once we finished with Larabanga we dropped off out guide and picked up another when we reached the Eco village of Mognori. We took a village tour to:

see the houses,

climb the roofs,


sat on benches,

play the drums,


hear stories, (pigeons are used for ceremonies here and are special to this village- the pigeons won’t drink their water unless it has these special coins in it)


learn ancient medicine, (this ring is not used by the medicine man anymore- but history goes that he would give it a spell when needed for someone else to fight- it was always tested on a tree first. After being punched the tree would die. This ring reminded me of the Lord of the Rings…I know I am a dork)


find out how to make shea butter into soap, (this process will be too hard to explain, but lets just say it is really detailed and takes along time. Shea butter in the US is expensive and the wealth is not trickling down as it should)







view their food storage (they had a hut full of ground nuts- or peanuts- it was amazing!)


and see their crops (they grow tobacco).



I learned so much and had a blast doing it.

After our trip we went back to the Motel and did more hanging by the pool. We went to bed early as not to miss our 4am bus ride.

The bus ride wasn’t so bad back to Tamale. At Tamale Betsy caught a bus to Kumasi while Jessie and I headed to Bolgatanga. While on the way to Bolgatanga we passed Walewale. I knew Emma would be in town somewhere, and thought it would be hilarious if I spotted her from the window. As we passed by a school in Walewale I was floored when I saw Emma on the back of a motorbike outside of the school. She didn’t see me, but I know it was her. There aren’t many obrunis in Northern Ghana.

Once in Bolgatanga we took a shared taxi to Paga. Paga is the northern most city in Ghana. It borders Burkina Faso. Why were we going to Paga?

That is an interesting story…