July 20. Holy Mole

We rise dark and early at 3am, as we’ve been told we must get to the bus station well before 4am to secure tickets on the bus from Tamale to Mole. The drive there is slowed by the dozens of sleeping goats and sheep sprawled out on the road. They disperse and let us past after some honking, put seem put out to be doing so.

At the bus station nothing happens for almost half an hour – just a few dozen people sitting sleepily in chairs at the open air station. When an official with the bus company arrives we find out the bus to Mole only runs once a day, at 1:30pm. But we’re told there’s a bus to Wa in the upper west region of the country that goes within 5km of Mole. We decide this is the best option, only to be told that the bus is already full.

At this point we make a friend named Kumara who suggests we take an 8am bus to the Damongo junction, about half way between Tamale and Mole, and try our luck finding a tro tro the rest of the way. Figuring that this is better than waiting around until 1:30, we find a bus company employee who walks us over to the line up for tickets to Damongo. After standing in the pitch dark for 20 minutes we’re told that it’s actually the line for tickets on the Kumasi-bound bus. We are not amused.

Next we thought we’d give the Wa bus another try, and fortunately it turns out that they are now into the standing room only ticket allocation. So we buy tickets and squeeze on, the second and third to last people let on. Three hours of sitting on our backpacks with peoples knees in our backs later we arrive at Larabanga, and take a motorbike the last 5km to the Park.

Since we left so early, we have plenty of time on our first day to do an afternoon safari. We lucked out and met a group of Dutch girls volunteering in Kumasi that came with their own vehicle and driver. So we piled into their truck and went on a guided vehicle safari. We saw plenty of antelope, warthogs, monkeys, baboons, and – the highlight by a wide margin – elephants. In fact, we were able to get out of the car and walk to within about 20 metres of the elephants, who munched away unperturbed.