Alternative route to Cote d’Ivoire via Bia National Park

Kira writes:

We got to Bia from Bibiani having first caught a VIP bus to Kumasi (35GhC) in comfort then negotiated a private taxi to Bibiani for 100GhC due to luggage for our NGO in Cote d’Ivoire.
In Bibiani we stayed at a small guesthouse ‘Kings Paradise’ (?) just along from Biggies a great restaurant.  Left at 7am for Bia Nat’l Park.  The road from Bibiani isn’t great & massively deteriorates after Mim, again we arranged a private taxi from Bibiani at 330GhC (Akosomo 024 684 0613) for the 250km drive.
You enter the Bia Forest area about an hour before Old Debiso, the forest roof is stunning, incredible foliage and a wealth of butterflies.  Old Debiso is quite a large village with a tro-tro station, offers either tro-tros or Metro Mass Transit buses to Kumasi.  However the park entrance is on the edge of New Debiso another 8km further on bad dirt road, the village is very basic in comparison
There’s a park HQ with a guesthouse that we stayed at, about 6 basic bedrooms & enormous living room but NOTHING TO EAT – we ended up going into the village New Debiso then cooking in Dominic’s kitchen, Dominic is in charge of tourism for the park.  We payed 25GhC for a large bedroom between 3 of us, one on a sofa and two of us sharing a double.
Butterfly population around the park HQ & guesthouse we saw was incredible … The grass around the guesthouse had something in it & drove us mad with scratching – beware!!!
If you want to go further into the park with your own transport (or ask Dominic to help to arrange transport) there are two camps, one at 37km from the gate & one about 42km … this would be far more interesting to possibly see Forest Elephants (we think we heard one when we stopped on the road driving towards Debiso).  Dominic thinks people could camp down at the camps with some prior notice
His number: +223 (0)20 027 0578 lovely guy, not pushy at all, really wants to help out.
From the Park, we continued onto the Ivoirian border at ‘OKK’Oseikojokrom in a private taxi again for 40GhC before jumping into an Ivoiran taxi to pass both Ghanaian & Ivoirian immigration formalities before entering the Ivoirian border town of Niable 25km from Abengourou

 

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