The road to Accra is as good as any I have travelled on. We kept bumping into the coast as we followed the road East, passing old haunts like Apam and dreamed of destinations like Elmina and Winneba. It takes 45 minutes in heavy slow moving traffic to get to the tro-tro’s (minibus’) final Accra destination of I don’t know where. Start to believe staying at the Hotel Messiah outside of Cape Coast (tagline, sense a taste of heaven) would have been a good idea.
Next morning its goodbye Ghana, hello/guten tag/bonjour Togo and its history of division between various colonial powers. Its an easy enough trip to Aflao and the border, where I’m not allowed to photograph the ocean.
So that’s 30 hours 20 minutes in Ghana, travelling 565km, exactly ten-times the length of Togo’s coastline.
The first thing I do in Lome, Togo’s capital, is walk to the beach with its bracing evening breeze. Sitting alone on a concrete bench so high off the ground my feet don’t touch the sand I read the words “one of the worst things you could do is walk on the beach alone, especially at night”, thanks Lonely Planet for spoiling that!
With the orange sun sinking over the border with Ghana I go in search of some food, just as the city’s bats have the same thought.
