Category: route

We just had to write a wee bit about the amazing Fan Milk ice creams that we have come across here in Ghana!

Picture this in your mind. It’s blazing hot outside and you are a soggy mess after riding all day when you hear a honk honk of a clown’s horn and a guy cycles by on a bike with a big freezer box on the front full of ice creams that cost between 10 and 20 pence a hit!

Can you really blame us for the orgy that follows? I think at times we are hitting between 4 and 5 Fan Milks a day and we have tried the full range of Fan Milks with Fan Choco (frozen chocolate Milk), Fan Ice (Vanilla Ice Cream) and Fan Yogo (frozen strawberry yogurt) among our favorites!

We are now in Togo having our bikes serviced and it was quite a relief for us that they still have Fan Milk here, and we have discovered a new flavor – Fan Extra (frozen strawberry yogurt with extra vitamins!)

As you can see from the pictures we’ve become quite the Fans and have resorted to all sorts of product placement to extol the virtues of our addiction!

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.

We have been in Ghana for a little over a week now and it’s been a really refreshing change for the two of us to be speaking in English again all the time, though it is African English it is brilliant to be able to communicate clearly with nearly everyone again.

Ghana is a wonderfully developed country after having been in some really poor countries for the last couple months, there is still major poverty and problems here, but some things just strike you when you come here after some of the other West African countries. The roads here and the infrastructure in general are just so much more advanced. Simple things like street lights in towns and electricity in the houses which we take for granted are far more common here than in the towns and villages of Mali and Burkina Faso. School kids are all over the place, not just children selling things, but actually children with uniforms and books and bags, we take it all for granted but it hits you when you ride into Ghana after these other countries.

One other thing that really hits you here is that it is a much more Christian country than any of the others we have been through so far, unfortunately it still seems to have been heavily influenced by some of the worst elements of Christianity, just as we have seen Islam with some of it’s worst elements in some of the other countries we have been to. Here there seems to be a large amount of the American Telly Evangelist style churches, with many places seeming to have turned church into more of a business than a place for the faithful to meet. For example some churches seem to have the pastor’s name in the same size writing as the name of the church – big and bold!

One funny aspect to all of this is that I (Jeremy) can’t go anywhere in Ghana without people calling out “Hey! Jesus!” because I look the spitting image of Jesus with my beard and long hair (nobody told them Jesus wasn’t European!), I’m pretty used to hearing this about 10 times a day and have tried a number of lines on them… the best so far seems to have been “Now you don’t need to go to church this Sunday because you have seen me!” I haven’t managed to work any miracles yet, but we have been fortunate in tying up a few loose ends while we have been here in Ghana.

The big news is that we now have a camera! After two attempts to send it to Africa it has finally arrived! The first time it made it to Senegal in 25 days after missing its 5 days guaranteed delivery time and this time it was sent with DHL on a 2 day delivery… it still took a week, not because this is Africa, but because the UK had it sitting in Brussels of all places for 4 days! Expect a sudden rush of pictures on the website again in the next week as we get carried away!

We also seem to have managed to get the very elusive visa for Angola sorted, apparently the Ambassador here in Accra has taken a personal interest in us overland travelers and has sorted out an arrangement with the Embassy in Brazzaville (Congo), we have applied for our visas here and apparently they will be waiting for us in Brazzaville! Wow, how cool is that! Angola has an up and coming star of an Ambassador here in Accra!

In amongst all of this we have enjoyed staying in Kumasi which probably has the largest market in West Africa (think acres of everything you can imagine include all sorts of witch doctor fetish stuff and you might be close!), we have sorted a few problems out with Keith’s bike (it was losing oil because the nut that holds the front sprocket came off because a locking washer wasn’t fitted properly by the mechanic in London when he put the chain on) and we have really enjoyed our stay at the Amamomo Beach Garden in Accra while we waited for our Visas and the delayed camera (it’s a little out of the city and very relaxed as the name would suggest, on the beach, and run by some very cool and friendly Rasta’s, it feels more like living with their family than being in a hotel, a welcome change from the big city life.)

So it’s been the second coming of Jesus and the camera! All in all good things to have I think!

So our plan now is to move on further West along the coast to enjoy the beach life a bit more and to get as far away from the big city bustle as we can get!

Update: It seems the African Surfers also had a similar experience and they blogged about it here, so this might actually be the third coming!.