Caboose

We walked from the Fort of Good Hope up to Senya Beraku’s tro-tro station and took a shared taxi to the junction on the coast road for ¢5000 each. From there we picked up a tro-tro direct to Takoradi for about ¢10,000. It’s a fairly long journey and the coast road is being rebuilt in parts, which led to a very bumpy and dusty ride.

The authorities in Ghana actually seem to take road safety seriously. Even on major roads there are severe speed bumps at the entrance and exit of each village.

We managed to find our way to the Amenla hotel and checked in. I was in a single with shared bathroom at ¢70,000 per night, Marebec and Dave in an ¢80,000 double. The hotel is OK but seems a bit run down and the dark green and grey colour scheme in the rooms combined with the high ceilings, barred windows and feeble fans make it fairly grim.

For lunch we checked the guidebook and decided on the Silver Pot restaurant, which seems to have gone downhill a bit since 2003. The air conditioning was off and so were most of the items on the menu. In the end I had a beef stir fry that was mostly gristle.

After lunch we checked our email at the Unicon internet cafe, all the ones mentioned in the guidebook having closed. We went back to the hotel for a bit then out for dinner, finding a new place called Bocadillo’s at the end of the Old Asanti road. The menu had the usual Ghanaian and “continental” food with the surprising addition of Nigerian food. I had a nice vegetarian pizza for ¢45,000 (£2.50).

On the way back to the hotel I bought some mosquito coils, the mesh on the hotel windows is full of holes. Takoradi in general seems pretty run down. Open sewers run down both sides of the streets and down the centre of major streets, making the city stink. We saw a few huge rats scurrying around and some vultures picking through heaps of rubbish.