Solveig writes:
I’ve just returned from a 3-week trip to Ghana (April/May 2013), mostly along the Western Ghanaian coast and to Ashanti region, and would like to mention that the entrance fees for sights (e.g. Elmina & Cape Coast castle, Kakum National Park) have increased quite a bit for foreigners, plus there is now a 20 cedi camera fee in both castles! (instead of 2 cedis)
My husband and I have lived in Ghana for almost a year, working on a voluntary basis with a chain of low-cost private schools west of Accra. In our free time we have travelled to different parts of the country, and I believe we have seen all the major points of interest. We have used your Guide extensively (our copy is well-worn!) and found it immensely valuable. We have noted just a few points where we believe it is out of date or inaccurate, and now that we are returning to the UK I have listed these, hoping that you may find then useful for a future edition. They are not in order of importance, just in the order they occur in the book.
Comments on the Bradt Guide to Ghana
p.69f: Buses may be the safest mode of travel, but we would hesitate to say they are the most efficient. The STC seems to be on the verge of folding: it now runs seldom on some routes, never on others. Some newer bus services are excellent, notably VIP which runs frequently between Accra and Kumasi. They are certainly more comfortable than most tro-tros, although the same is not true of the Metro Mass buses (seating 5 across instead of 4). But the long distance tro-tros are (in our experience) as fast as buses, and a lot more convenient.
You rightly point out that buses will drop passengers off along their route. The problem is that they will not pick passengers up along their route – you have to buy your ticket at the original point of departure. For example, we live some 15 miles west of Accra, in the direction of Cape Coast. But to get to Cape Coast (or beyond) by bus, we would have to first go to Accra, in the opposite direction! With traffic hold-ups, this can add hours to your journey – we speak from experience, having done this soon after arrival in Ghana, before we knew better!
The other problem with buses which run to fixed schedules is the difficulty of getting information about timetables. Websites do not work; emails are not answered; phone calls may be ignored, or switched through to a fax machine. If by any chance you do get through, you will probably be told that your query cannot be answered (‘we don’t know yet’) or given information which is later proved to be incorrect.
So we quickly learned to take our chances with tro-tros, and found it amazing that (as you state on p.70) you can just turn up at a station and be assured that there will be a vehicle going where you want to go; no need to find out about times, just go when it suits you!
On the subject of tro-tros, we do not agree that it would be better to wait outside the vehicle until it is ready to depart (p.70). The earlier you board, the better your chances of choosing the optimal seat. We were usually quite glad to have just missed a tro-tro if this meant being first to board the next one. Yes, you would be waiting a while for it to depart, but you would be able to choose the most comfortable seats – if you were really lucky, you might be able to get the ones at the front, beside the driver. Not only do these offer the best views, they are generally more comfortable – and you do not have to get up to let people on and off!
p.76: As a vegetarian, I have lived in Ghana for a year, eaten out frequently, and experienced no problems at all. You paint an unnecessarily depressing picture. It’s true that most local Ghanaian food is meat- or fish-based, but you can usually get red red (bean stew with plantains) or jolloff rice (cooked with tomatoes and onions). And if you go to restaurants advertising ‘Continental’ (i.e. western) as well as local cuisine, you will find that pizzas and other vegetarian dishes are common. Indeed, many of the restaurants where we ate had a specific ‘Vegetarian’ section on the menu, with at least 3 or 4 options.
p.77: June 4 has not been a public holiday in Ghana since 2000!
p.117: The Hotel Shangri-La is now called the Western Sun, but is currently closed for refurbishment.
p.126: The Tribes restaurant at Afia African Village is excellent, but you cannot see the sea!
p.129: The Centre for National Culture does not close at 3pm on Saturdays. We visited between 4.30 and 5pm.
p. 138: It’s not really true that the National Theatre is ‘host to regular plays and dance performances’. Plays are in fact very rare: the theatre is used more often for events such as religious rallies, graduation ceremonies, beauty contests etc, but most nights it is not used at all. Finding out what is on is not easy. When we first arrived in Ghana the website was not working, we could get no information by telephone, and even visiting the theatre in person (twice) got us nowhere. The website is now functioning, but only gives information about the coming week. There is no way of booking other than going to the theatre in person – difficult if you do not live in Accra. However, I doubt if there is ever a problem about buying tickets on arrival; when we finally managed to see a performance there were no more than 30 people in the audience.
On that same evening, we planned to eat in the theatre restaurant, recommended in the Guide. We found that the ‘International restaurant’ offered drinks only, no food, not even snacks. It was too late to go elsewhere, so we went hungry!
p.150: In Winneba, the cemeteries mentioned are overgrown, especially the Settlers’ (European) cemetery – we could not get anywhere near the graves. But there are a couple of interesting towers in Winneba which are not mentioned in the Guide.
p.151: The map of Winneba is unhelpful; it does not show the lorry park (tro-tro station), so we struggled to orientate ourselves on arrival. The road to Lagoon Lodge is shown in the wrong place (unless the road on the map is meant to be the footpath from the Lodge to the beach).
At Lagoon Lodge itself, it is impossible to see the sunset from the bar (which is surrounded by a high wall). And even if the wall was knocked down, the bar would not overlook the Muni Lagoon. We walked some distance looking for the lagoon, but found only dried up mud. If the lagoon still exists, it must be some way from the lodge.
p.153: In Mankessim, we managed to find the famous posuban shrine, but it is not on the same road as the tro-tro station. In fact, it is about 500 metres up the road to the right from the roundabout, coming from Accra.
pp.164 and 178: We could not find shared taxis between Cape Coast and Elmina at the places mentioned, but dropping taxis were cheap.
p.173: The Canopy walkway at Kakum National Park now costs 30 cedis each – a big increase on the 9 cedis mentioned in the book.
p.196: The map is misleading. The scale indicates that it is about 2km from Agona to Busua, but in fact it is 10 (as stated on page 197).
p.207: We were disappointed with Ankobra Beach (‘almost breathtaking perfection’): it is so narrow, there is very little sand between the resort and the sea. We thought the resort was quite expensive too.
p.226: It is possible to get a tro-tro direct to Ada Foah from Tudu station in Accra (there is a booking office specifically for tickets).
p.227: The Manet Paradise Holiday Resort is closed (for refurbishment?)
p.228: In one respect the facilities at the Maranatha Estuary Beach Club have improved on your description – they now have some flushing toilets! Our problem (not stated in the Guide) was that there is nowhere at all to wash, shave etc. The other beach camps were all closed when we were there in August.
p.263: We were not impressed with the Kekeli Hotel in Ho. There was no water at night, and no mirror in the bathroom for shaving etc. It was very noisy on Sunday morning, even before the church service started! There were lots of children running around, and one even burst into our room. We had chosen to stay there partly because the Guide mentions that car rental can be arranged for a fixed and apparently very reasonable price. When we enquired, the receptionist said that we would have to negotiate with the taxi driver. She arranged for him to come and meet us, but was otherwise not involved. We had to return to the hotel to meet him (and he was nearly an hour late). The price he asked was extortionate, but by that stage we had no alternative. We bargained, and he agreed to lower his price, but not by much. What we paid was far in excess of what we paid anywhere else.
The Freedom Hotel is now called the Bob Coffie.
p.264: We tried two of the Ho eating places listed in the Guide. The Mother’s Inn offered only banku and fufu; the White House had no food at all. We ended up having lunch at what we believe was a new restaurant; it was called the Royal Farm, it was close to the Kekeli Hotel, and the food was excellent.
p.268: At the welcome office in Amedzofe, the local guide said that there were two options: the waterfall walk and the mountain walk (as per the Guide). He that we would be able to climb Mt Gemi, but would find the waterfall walk ‘too challenging’. We are in our 60s but very fit, and as we had gone to Amedzofe mainly to see the waterfall, we insisted. The guide was not kidding! The first part of the walk was flat and easy, but then it plunged steeply downhill, and lost all semblance of being a ‘path’ – it was a long scramble over slippery rocks, clinging to a rope. We managed it (with help from the guide) but both the descent and the climb back up were very difficult. We wondered why there was no hint of this in the Guide – surely a warning would be appropriate? Re-reading it afterwards, we wondered if we had in fact done a different walk, since we did not ‘come out at the three knee-deep pools separating the upper and lower falls’. We ended up at the base of the lower falls – the ‘more ambitious’ walk mentioned? But if there is an alternative (easier) walk, why did our guide not offer this – especially as he felt the waterfall walk would be too challenging for us?
p.284: The Wli Water Heights Hotel is a lot more than 50m from the turn-off for the tourist information centre. A sign at the turn-off says 300m, and having walked it several times, we would say it is at least that.
p.291: We had to laugh when we read that the road between Accra and Kumasi ‘follows good surfaced roads in its entirety’. On the contrary, much of the journey is on rough dirt roads; the bus has to travel slowly, with much jolting, and the trip takes 6 hours. We found it amazing that the road between the capital and second biggest cities was in such bad shape; some people we talked to maintained that this was a deliberate political decision to keep business and finance in the south.
p.307: The book says there are 8 STC buses daily between Accra and Kumasi. There are now hardly any (STC seems to have declined considerably, with few buses going anywhere). But there is an excellent new company called VIP, which has a bus station not far from the main STC station. You buy a ticket which specifies a bus and seat number. Buses leave as soon as they are full – generally about every half hour.
p.312: On the map of Kumasi, the Sambra Hotel is in the wrong place, as is the Manhyia Palace (it is much further from the town/market than the map suggests).
p.313: The Four Villages Inn was pleasant enough, and the breakfasts were excellent. But we considered it very expensive compared with what we usually pay in Ghana. On our second visit to Kumasi we stayed in the Sambra Hotel which cost about a third of the price, and was more conveniently located. It also has an excellent restaurant.
p.315: We were not able to find Aseda House, but there was a large hole in the ground where it is shown on the map, so perhaps it has been demolished.
p.320: We went to the Adae Festival in Kumasi, and it was certainly worth seeing. What you said about photography was accurate, but the time given was not: the ceremony started well after 12 and was still in progress when we had to leave about 2pm.
p.355: Entrance to Kintampo Falls now costs 7 cedis for non-Ghanaians. We were there at Easter, and could not get near the Falls owing to the crowds of people wading, dancing and generally having a good time in the water. The atmosphere was amazing – it’s obviously the place for locals to go on public holidays!
p.377: We thought the Larabanga mosque was beautiful, and we did not suffer any of the problems reported by your readers. We enjoyed a brief but hassle-free visit.
p.397: The Hotel Myaga at Navrongo was very limited in terms of food. It amused us that the price for a double room included only one breakfast!
Sandie & Ian
I just returned from a 3 month period in Ghana. I would like to express my gratitude for the Bradt travel guide. It was a great asset to carry!!
To help improve your guide, I would like to make a few comments.
- The prices you mention in the guide are in general too low. The fuel prices have increased by 50% in January and that is the main reason for higher prices for almost everything.
- The Coconut Grove Bridge House in Elmina is a good recommendation. It’s wonderful to be in the middle of the town’s bustle, have a great view at the castle & still don’t be harassed on the terrace of the hotel. The phone numbers in the guide are not correct. One number that does work is: +233-20-7125868. The price for my room was 55 Cedi, so the quoted dollar prices are too high.
- The Butwaku traditional drum and dance ensemble in Elmina Castle doesn’t seem to exist anymore. I haven’t seen nor heard them in February and April and none of the locals could confirm their existence.
- I can especially recommend the walking tour done by Felix of Ghanaecotours.com. He has an office in the castle, next to the shop or can be reached on these numbers: +233-20-8159369 & +233-24-2176357. His walk through town is very informative and he is a very enthusiastic tour guide. I went to Elmina twice and took his walking tour both times!
- Takoradi for me was the most friendly town in Ghana. No one harassed us, people were friendly and very helpful.
- The widely praised Green Turtle Lodge in Akwidaa didn’t impress me at all. I tried making a reservation twice but didn’t receive any response to my text messages. Arriving to the lodge in the afternoon we met a very un-helpful staff member who told us there were no rooms available and didn’t offer any help to get other accommodation, not very comforting after the quite difficult trip there with public transport…. Fortunately I remembered from the Bradt Guide that there is a more up-market beach resort along the same beach, so we walked over the beach to Safari Beach lodge which did have available cabins. After all I was extremely happy because the Safari Beach Lodge is a wonderful place to spend some days!
- I think the description “the hike to the upper falls is more arduous” for the upper fall in Wli (Volta Region) is not adequate. The 6 hour hike (from lower fall to upper fall, taking a loop on the rim back to town) was the most strenuous hike I ever made in my life. As I put on twitter it makes the Bright Angel trail in the Grand Canyon look like a lazy afternoon walk! Parts are so steep that you actually have to climb your walking rod to get up. I would advise only very fit and sportive persons to do this hike.
- We really enjoyed our visit to Adanwomase, a kente weaving village close to Kumasi. The walking tour through town was very enjoyable and the community project is successful, we didn’t feel pressured to buy kente cloth after the tour and were only met by very friendly locals.
Again I would like to thank you for your great work. It made my trip to Ghana easier and more enjoyable to have Bradt at hand!
Helga
It seems that the overcharging virus has spread to most restaurants. While we paid revised bills initially once we discovered the problem, on one occasion we paid nothing at all which resulted in a major standoff. I think a good policy for travellers to adopt is a) check the bills against the menue (even if they only present the bill the day after), b) ensure that you get an original VAT bill – we saw many copies and at one place (Oasis Beach in Cape Coast) where we got several bills with the same number! and c) implement a penalty for the overcharging rather than just paying a revised bill (they have nothing to loose by trying to cheat).
Andrea Schäfer
Danielle from Busua Inn has posted this article about preparing for a trip to Ghana on her blog. It is in French and discusses different areas such as visa, malaria, currency exchange, telephone, transport, etc and should be very useful to French speaking visitors.
Just had this very detailed email in, relating to the 4th edition rather than the 5th, but it seems worth reproducing some parts of it anyway
We really appreciated having your very helpful Ghana guidebook on our recent visit to Ghana. We wanted to give you a few suggestions for changes and updates, in case you haven’t already heard about these things:
-Despite it being more out of the way than we expected, we agree with the recommendation for Afia Beach Hotel. There are some quirks – for example, the level of friendliness from the staff varies drastically (there were some waiters and a front desk guy who we really liked and could chat with, but then other people including a front desk woman and the woman who works in the gallery were rather cold to us). But in general it is a really nice place and we would go back.
-We couldn’t find anything in the guidebook about drug laws (or drugs, or laws). People do offer drugs to tourists, so your readers should be informed.
-There is a decent restaurant right next to the Accra airport called Landings. It is kind of expensive, and we wouldn’t recommend the steak or other western fare, but they have a good selection of local foods – including an excellent gari foto special on Fridays for 18 cedis. We probably wouldn’t make a special trip out there, but readers may want to know a good place near the airport.
-The biggest omission that we noticed in the guidebook is Mercy Ocansey & Sons Batik shop. You go west on the street that runs just north of Frankie’s, and you go for about two blocks and it’s on the left. This place is amazing – they have beautiful batiks and fabulous tailors. We bought a bunch of wax print fabrics at Woodin (more on that next) and took them to Mercy’s shop, and a tailor measured us and then made us some beautiful, very professional clothing with a real eye for detail, for a very reasonable price. For about 100 cedis including tip, he made us three dresses, two vests, a pair of pants, a skirt, and two blouses. It takes a few days, so you have to plan ahead, but it is well worth it. After we saw our items, we wished we’d ordered twice as many things, but by then it was too late to get more before we had to leave. When we first walked in they had a few other customers there and the service seemed a little slow, but once the crowd thinned out, the customer service was fabulous – they got our somewhat complicated order exactly right and were very friendly (especially Mercy herself).
-Woodin (on the east side of Cantonments Road, maybe halfway between Frankie’s and Koala Market) is a wonderful, upscale fabric store that sells beautiful wax print fabrics as well as ready-made clothing. The prices are considerably higher than at a market stall, but the selection is bigger and you can browse in a pressure-free environment.
-We would not recommend Tip Top Chinese restaurant. They tried to pull a bottled water scam on us (brought us a bottle that was already opened and even had a cracked lid, which was probably a used bottle that they had simply refilled with tap water), and the food was not that great and not cheap.
-For fried chicken in Osu, we recommend Chicken Republic, which is on Cantonments Road a bit south of Papaye (on the same side of the street). The food is decent and cheap, the air conditioning is great, it’s clean, and they have one of the best toilets in the whole city.
-Just next to Chicken Republic is a friendly gelato and espresso shop called Arlecchino’s (674/2 Cantonments Road). The gelato and espresso drinks are good, and the pastries look nice too.
-The location of “Monsoon Restaurant and Nightclub” on the map is confusing because the (excellent!) restaurant/bar called “Monsoon” that is mentioned in the text is in the Osu Food Court a few blocks away on Cantonments Road.
-As an alternative to Monsoon (which is hard to get into without a reservation on weekends), there is a nice, upscale restaurant called Supreme just around the corner. If you are going north on Cantonments Road from the Osu food court (maybe Embassy Road?), you turn left down the first big street and then the restaurant is about a block down on the left. They have good Italian dishes, omelets and other breakfast items, and a very nice pastry case. They also have the best toilet in town!
-There is a great chop bar in Osu called Asanka Locals that has delicious redred and a big menu of many other traditional foods. They also have grass cutter (a.k.a. cane rat), a local game specialty that we didn’t see anywhere else in Accra. The place is bigger and cleaner than we expected from a chop bar. The prices may be a little higher than at a usual chop bar, but they were still reasonable for such good food. Asanka Locals is on a side street off of Cantonments Road (to the west), towards the south end.
-There is a nice gift shop on the road just behind Koala Market in Osu called “Global Mamas”. They sell all kinds of clothing and other products made with nice batik fabrics, jewelry, and gifts. It’s a fair trade shop, so the prices aren’t cheap, but they have some cool and unique things and convenient hours.
-The tip about using the toilet at a bank was really helpful. We were walking in the Ussher Town area and had to go really badly, with no restaurants or public toilets in sight, and I remembered that tip from the book and steered us towards a bank. Even though banking hours were over for the day, the security guard let us right in, and it was a decent toilet.
-I got laughed at when I mentioned “Makola market” to a local because apparently the “o” in Makola is really an “ↄ”, which I didn’t know because of the spelling in the guidebook. I did notice an occasional alternate spelling, “Makorla”, online and on some signs. I would suggest either using that alternate spelling or adding the “ↄ” symbol to your font. There must be other words and names in the book where this is relevant (same with the “ɛ” vowel).
-We strongly recommend that if people have time to go to Aburi, they should do all their craft/curio shopping at the roadside stalls there instead of at the National Cultural Centre/Arts Centre in Accra. The prices are drastically lower in Aburi, and there’s a lot less pressure and hassle. When we went to the Arts Centre, we let ourselves get pressured into spending literally every dime we had on us, and then later in Aburi we saw some similar items for a fraction of the prices we’d paid.
-Relatedly, I disagree somewhat with the discussion on p. 65 about bargaining. In several instances, especially in Accra, we felt that the opening prices offered by people at markets and roadside stalls were grossly inflated because we were tourists. We managed to negotiate them down a little, then later found out we’d still overpaid by 200-300% compared to the prices we got in Aburi when our driver came shopping with us. It is true that we had expendable income allowing us to be tourists in Ghana, but probably not nearly as much as the shop owners thought we had. We encountered plenty of wealthy Ghanaians who no doubt had lots more money than us (and were dressed better, too). So I don’t really think it’s fair to suggest to your readers that they just accept being drastically overcharged because of guilt over being a tourist in a third world country. The more your readers go along with this exploitation, the worse things will get for future tourists. And it really makes the trip less pleasant, feeling buyer’s remorse and feeling like you got suckered. This is especially true when you consider that most people on a trip to Africa will be burdened with requests for souvenirs from friends and family who don’t realize that it’s not a place where you can buy really nice things for dirt cheap.
-On p. 66 it says that for a charter taxi driver “at worst you should be looking at around US$25 daily, exclusive of extras such as fuel”. This is a low quote in our experience. I wouldn’t even want to venture an estimate, but for a full day it is probably a lot more than that. Plus the “extras” really add up – if you use a whole tank of gas it’s like $30 right there, plus then there are tolls, meals for the driver, etc. It is definitely worth hiring a driver for day trips, but readers should consider this when planning their budgets, and factor in at least $100 per day for the driver, fuel, etc.
-We also must take issue with the discussion of credit cards on p. 58, which says, “If you are spending one week only in Ghana, all in Accra, then you should be fine with a Visa card and nothing else.” This is totally false. Apart from our hotel, we did not encounter a single store or restaurant in Accra with a reliable Visa machine. 90% didn’t have a machine at all (even places like the Nike store in the Accra mall), and in the remaining 10% (e.g., Woodin) the machine wouldn’t work. Shoprite in the Accra mall claims to take cards, but for a credit card purchase you have to have a PIN, which I didn’t. Taxis and charter drivers don’t take credit cards, and obviously if readers are only eating street food (see earlier discussion) they will not be able to pay for that with a card. If we only had a credit card we would basically never have been able to leave our hotel, even for meals, and it would have been a miserable experience. We advise readers never to count on being able to use their credit cards for anything, and to withdraw cash as often as they can since you can never count on a working ATM being available either.
-The National Museum is disappointing. We still recommend people visit there, since they have an interesting collection and could probably use the admission fee money. But readers may want to prepare themselves to be depressed about how poorly the artifacts are being taken care of – many of them are just out in the open, and there’s no air conditioning or dehumidifier. The pieces also generally don’t have dates on them, so you miss out on a lot of vital historical context. And the gift shop is terrible – they even sell this nasty fake kente cloth printed on cheap fake silk (no doubt made in China). We certainly expected better from a museum gift shop.
We hope these suggestions will be useful to you for the next edition of the guidebook! Thanks for providing such a great resource.
On June 1, 2010, the Electricity Corporation of Ghana raised its rates dramatically. It was the first increase since 2004! Non-residential rates were increased over a whopping 100%. Before June 1, each unit over the first 600 costs 0.195 p. After June 1 each unit over the first 600 costs 0.450 p, representing an increase of 130.77%! In short, travellers to Ghana might expect large discrepancies between advertised rates such as those you will find in guides or on brochures and those quoted at reception. Phone ahead to get the revised rate.
Chris Scott
