Author: Keith

We have a good friend from Gibralter, Nigel, who we met at the beginning of this trip. Nigel, a fellow biker, religiously signs his comments and mails with the guiding line ‘keep the rubber side down!’.

Jeremy, for his part, generally abides though it must be said that Ghana has been something of an exception. The following picture is of an event which took place in Accra, the capital of Ghana. It’s not often you get to see a bike from this angle so we thought we’d share this rare sight with the rest of you.

The question on all your minds now is ‘ What just happened?’. Was Jeremy trying his hand at some evil knievel trickery? or Was there some freak accident? or something completely different…

We’ll post the answer in the comments after some of you take a stab at a guess. The most correct answer gets a years supply of FanMilk! (but you have to come to Africa to get it)

After the chilled moments spent relaxing at the GT lodge the team were lucky enough to be put up at an old colonial fort in Dixcove. 10km’s from the GT lodge. On one of my random missions I bumped into the owner. The order of the day was to locate ‘the secret beach’ and some dry accommodation in nearby Busua. On my way to the secret beach I was introduced to Rob, the owner of the fort. He’s building a restaurant and lodge on a super picturesque beach with the help of Florian, a German biker who also happens to be a roof carpenter.

He’s a dead ringer for Woody Harrelson but sounds more like Arnold Schwarzenegger. We’d met Florian at the GT lodge and he’d told me to drop by where he works and he’d point me in the direction of the elusive beach. While I was there talking to Rob he was kind enough to extend us an invitation to stay at the fort for a couple of nights.

In the Ghana Bradt guide Rob is described as an eccentric Englishman. Frankly they couldn’t be more wrong. Rob is a clever, kind and ambitious kinda guy who’s got both his feet very firmly on the ground. Rob is doing some brilliant work in this little corner of the world. He’s helped the locals of Dixcove and its environs to build several churches, a road linking Dixcove to nearby Busua, and some much needed accommodation. He’s a pragmatist who’s getting good things done and using his own private means to do them. This kind of behaviour is rare but it’s philanthropic; most definitely not eccentric.

Many thanks go out to Rob for his kind hospitality and also to the staff at the fort for their help and generosity.

We’ve uploaded some more pictures to the Ghana gallery. There’s more of the fort, Cape Coast castle, one of the largest forts, and our travels along the Ghanian coastline as we head towards Togo. We’ve also created a Togo gallery with pics of our adventures in Lomé thus far.

After we left Accra we made a beeline for the much reputed Green Turtle lodge. The GT lodge, located in the south west of Ghana, is a sedate environmentally friendly backpackers haven which is almost always full to the brim with young volunteers and intrepid travellers. The lodge is nestled in a paradise setting of palm and coconut trees and lies just inches from an untouched picturesque beach. It’s the kind of place where civilisation ceases to exist and days melt away into weeks as you breeze through your time on a diet of card games, body boarding, swimming and beach volley ball. All fueled by some very tasty food prepared by the lodge’s great staff. There’s no Internet there (you may have noticed), no phone reception (unless you go to the two magic bamboo sticks) and no mains electricity. All of this is very roughly connected to the rest of the world by a 10km rugged old dirt road.

When we arrived at the lodge we coincidentally arrived at the same time as three fellow travellers who we had briefly bumped into as we were leaving Ougadougou. Rich, Sach and Kru are back-packing through west Africa and have followed a route very similar to our own.

On one of our days in the lodge we decided that we were all pining for Internet, fan ice (the best ice-crean in Ghana), and some phone time too. Jeremy, Kru, Rich and myself went twos up on the bikes and rode out to Takoradi, the closest thing to civilization around these parts. We had a great day but on our way back a storm was brewing. The storm broke just as we passed Dixcove and hit the aforementioned dirt road. We were trying to go slowly but Jeremy and Kru came off as Jeremy tried to negotiate his way out of a slippery rut. Both the guys sustained minor skin injuries and both have received two bad knee injuries. Thankfully no bones are broken but both of the guys have been in a lot of pain ever since. Luckily Rich is a doctor and he promptly put the guys on a killer cocktail of antibiotics and pain killers.

For the last week the lads have been taking it easy waiting for the swelling to come down and their wounds to start healing. The latter has been tricky as a humid beach atmosphere isn’t very conducive to healing injuries. Yesterday we moved on from the lodge and Jeremy thinks he’ll be able to get back on the horse by tomorrow.We’ve finally created a Ghana gallery and added pictures from our adventures here thus far.

After our long stays in Senegal and Gambia we decided to put a renewed impetus on the journey and our desire to push forward or more appropriately downward. As it stands the journey has evolved into a series of unplanned back to back holidays. That’s not a bad thing it’s just how life off the road has unfolded.

Picking up from where we last left off… we were dashing eastwards through Mali towards Bamako. The only thing we really noticed out of the blur was that the people changed considerably. Poverty has become much more visible and in a way more prominent. However people have become more genuine and less hassling. A constant pain in Senegal and Gambia.

We arrived to Bamako in dramatic fashion. My rear wheel met with a vicious 3 inch nail. The bugger ploughed directly through the thinning Desert tyres and super tough inner tube. Our 27 socket, which is needed to remove the back wheel and fix the puncture, fits into a ratchet which for the last 2 weeks has been out of action. As our luck would have it my puncture brought us to a standstill only 100 meters from a small but very friendly motorbike mechanic. Lucky is not the word.

After we replaced the tube with a spare we rode on and arrived in Bamako proper. While there we stayed in a small encampment recommended to us by friends we had met in Dakhla, Western Sahara. It was cool to have made the association and to have heard a lot more dirt on Colin…. Don’t worry Colin it wasn’t all bad! The plan from Bamako was to head south towards Abidjan in the Ivory Coast and then eastwards along the coast to Accra in Ghana. The cheeky Ivorians had a differnt plan. They’d shut their Embassy in Bamako for a week and we were left with the choice between a new route to plan or a week to hang around and wait. We chose the former and decided to go through Burkina Faso and from there into Ghana. A place which surprised us greatly and made us happy to have been detoured. Luck again was on our side as we heard last night from a local in Ghana that troubles have just started to flare up again in the Ivory Coast.