Life’s a beach !
With Jer away for a week in China, we inherit his house, his cook and his car. A rather smooth introduction to life in Ghana by any standard. We had no hesitation in taking advantage of all these perks, and took the car to go exploring.
Driving in and around Accra is remarkably stress free, when you are not trying to keep to a tight schedule that is. Most importantly Ghanean drivers are quite relaxed and pay respects to the basic rules of the driving code. According to some this is the only place in West Africa where people stop at traffic light even late at night. Still, the scenery and the experience remains unmistakably West African: cars and trucks stretched well beyond their useful lifes (I even saw a few Peugeot 504 going around), roadsides consisting of endless stalls, workshops selling just about everything, goods and bags piled up to improbable heights seemingly defying the laws of physics. Whilst a challenge to the driver, this spectacle provides endless entertainment for the passengers, or at least enough to keep Elias occupied during the 1h30 trip to Kokrobite.
Kokrobite is a fishing village just West of Accra known for its nice beaches and a favourite week-end destinations for those living in the capital. No big resort here (yet), the beach camps consist simply of a few wooden huts with thatched roof. Apparently this is currently the low season and on this Tuesday we are the only customers on this lovely beach. A few hundreds meters down fishermen are coming back from their day at sea. Watching them surfing the waves to beach their narrow dugout canoes on the sand is impressive.
Later on that day we will stumble on one of these backpackers hangout where weed and beer are cheap, life flows to the beat of reggae music, and fresh barracuda is on the menu - yum !
With Jer back from China earlier than planned we head back to Ada for the week-end (remember, the bamboo huts by the Volta river). Before we go however, we have to stock up on fish, the perfect excuse to go spear-fishing in the harbour in Tema. Accra’s commercial harbour sounds like an odd place to go skin-diving, and indeed the yard where we wet the boat is as dirty as one would expect. Fortunately the water around the outer jetty is clear and Jer’ will catch 4 good size snappers (carpe rouge en francais). Me? Well, I will do better next time...
Blah Blog
Monday, 22 January 2007
Can you hear the waves?
