Ghana: my first tour around.

As I said my parents came for a trip to Ghana in September. I was very much looking forward to their trip, for them to finally see the people and places I talk about, to share my experience with home, and not forgetting all the lovely goodies they were bringing me.

I tried to make a plan of where we would go, and what we would do, which I jotted down on a piece of scrap paper. I headed down to Accra a few days before they were due to arrive to book a hotel and buy our tickets for the flight to Tamale.

Buying things in Ghana is always an experience and something you have to plan. You see credit cards is pretty much an alien concept here. Virtually no where accepts them, and if they do, 99% of the time the authorisation process fails. Therefore the only payment choice is cash. I am not sure if I have previously spoken about money, the paper currency denominations are, ¢5000, ¢10000, ¢20000, with ¢1000 and ¢2000 as small change notes. It is likely when you withdraw money from banks they will give you 5’s or 10’s. Now the airline I bought the tickets from would only accept cash, dollars or cedis. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough dollars on me to buy three tickets so I had to pay in cedis. Each ticket cost ¢1,400,000. so in total ¢4,200,000. I had mostly ¢10000 notes, so 420 notes! I had to practically take a briefcase to deliver the cash.

I think the photo journey sums up our trip, it was wonderful to share my experiences of Tumu with family. Both Mum and Dad thoroughly enjoyed their trip and particularly Tumu. Everyone in town made them feel very welcome, and Dad was taken under the wing of some people and carted off for a Pito session. The rest of the trip we travelled around Ghana going to some very beautiful and interesting places. We hired a car and driver, Malik.

A brief outline of our trip was as follows in the next couple of Blog Entries