The first 7,000 km, I went by aeroplane within 12 hours including a 3-hour stop at Brussels.
The rest of only 423 km will take another 11h.
After a quiet night in the hotel in Accra, the capital of Ghana, the traffic outside on the road woke me up.
Breakfast at the well-stocked buffet was delicious. Only I thought no experiments on the first day. So bread rolls with strawberry jam and cheese.
Not together, that would be strange, one after the other.
After the departure was postponed to 9:00 a.m. at short notice, I had a bit more time.
Then I leisurely made my way to reception at 8:30. What do I do with the CheckOut? I don’t want to pay for it now, I’m sure it’s just a hassle to get my money. I have no idea how this is supposed to work. Just asking helps 🙂 All right, the room is already paid for. Quite expensive, I thought, about 200$.
Now it’s time to go. The plan is to drive along the coast and then have lunch around 2am. Ganesh says we have a “good road” until lunch and then a “bad road”. Ok, I am curious.
There is a lot of traffic through the city and it takes more than 1h until we leave Accra.
Somehow it feels good to me. The hustle and bustle of the people, the madness on the street. The many small stalls along the road and the vendors on the street. The vast majority of them are women. If there is a man, he sells wiping discs. Besides that, there are all kinds of things you can buy directly from the car. Drinks, snacks, masks, toilet paper, tissues,… Actually, it’s not that stupid, if you’re stuck in a traffic jam anyway, you can buy what’s still missing.
Finally we are out of the city and the traffic becomes less and we make faster progress.
At 12 we take a short break to stretch our legs, look at the sea and have a cold drink. We are not all there, because the driver is not allowed, he has to wait in the car. Then I get to hear the whole story that another driver crashed Ganesh’s car 3 months ago. It was broad daylight and he flew off the track with the car, the airbags went off and the front axle must have been pretty much ripped out – total loss. But that was a junior driver.
After I wouldn’t really call the first part a good road, I asked again. What is “bad road”. Ganesh ponders a bit and then gives what is probably the only correct answer. “the definition of bad road is no road”.
I’ll probably live to see. So we continued our journey until lunch at the Indian restaurant, which must be a good friend of Ganesh. The food was delicious, we had chicken meat with garlic bread. He put a huge portion on the table for me, I couldn’t eat that much at all. Now only the driver is missing, he was not allowed to come again, but had to fill up the car and get something to eat somewhere else. When he was still not back after 1 hour, hectic phone calls, but nobody answered the phone. Don’t push, I thought, and in the meantime we had a delicious tea.
So the final spurt – the last 200km will soon be over – I thought to myself. Until I found out that we would be at our destination at about 9 pm. That’s right, there was the BAD ROAD. I was allowed to get to know it too. First there are all kinds of things on the road, trucks, cars, tricycles, motorbikes, scooters, bicycles, pedestrians, chickens and goats. Then there are lots of potholes, so deep that it’s better not to drive through them if you don’t want to damage your car. There is only one possibility, you have to drive around the deep holes, sometimes on the opposite lane, sometimes on the shoulder, sometimes next to the actual road, sometimes next to the shoulder on the opposite lane, or even at walking speed through the hole. Even with a Landcruiser, that still gives a hefty bump in the bodywork. In front of every town and also within the towns there are no speed limits but a sill concreted onto the road. In the end, much more effective than 30 km/h or “ATTENTION SCHOOL” or other signs. You can drive over the sills at a maximum speed of 20 km/h, and you can feel it enormously. No one drives faster here, and if they do, they do it exactly once and then break down with a defective car.
But on to Samreboi. The further away from Accra, the smaller the huts along the road. The people here are really poor. Such a stark contrast to Munich. The further inland we go, the greener it gets. Nature is just great here. The driver does everything he can to arrive in Samreboi much earlier.
A quick honk on the horn, then they overtake, and I thought people in Ghana obviously don’t have more time when driving. It was slowly getting dark and we still had a 2-hour drive to our destination. I had already heard at home that in Africa it is best not to drive in the dark. We have long since left the asphalt road behind us and are now on “no road”. I have driven a lot, but I have never experienced this, and you have to have faith in God. It’s pitch black at night, really dark, but there’s still no less traffic on the road. There are still pedestrians who suddenly appear, or cyclists without lights, only if you look closely can you sometimes see the cat’s eyes of the pedals. All kinds of vehicles without lights or only with lights in front. When a car is coming towards you, it’s so dusty that I can’t make it out. How the driver can see potholes is a mystery to me. And if a truck comes along loaded with wood, it’s better to pull over to the side, or even beside the road if necessary, because the truck pulls through mercilessly. Let’s have a quick look at the speedometer, our car is thundering along the track at 80 km/h in the darkness, I don’t feel so good any more.
Now you might say, yes, I also drive at 80 on the Mittlerer Ring.
OK, it’s brightly lit at night, there are no chickens or goats, there are no bicycles or pedestrians on the road, and most importantly, there are no potholes on the ring road that could rip the axle out.
In the end, we arrived safely without an accident, just a bit shaken up.
#StayTuned
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