Ghana is blessed with a total of 16 National Parks with Mole
(pronounced mole/ay) being the biggest and best, not to mention the easiest one
to reach from Zebilla. Our guide book
warns that to get there one must brave the worst road in Ghana (and you know
how much I love travelling here!) so we were prepared for a rough journey. In fact, there has been quite a lot of
construction work and, whilst not exactly pleasant, the road was tolerable.
And, it was worth the journey too…
We had to overnight at a friend’s house in Bolga, rise before the crack of dawn, in the usual Ghanaian fashion, then have a very tedious wait between the next two buses. Still we arrived at the Park just as the sun set to spend a pleasant evening in the motel; there were five of us altogether.
The motel is situated on the edge of the Park, at the top of a
small escarpment; the perfect spot for looking down onto the two waterholes and
savannah immediately below. Beyond this,
the rangers don’t actually range very far and much of the 5,000 square
kilometres is left to its wildlife. We
are told that if only the rangers patrolled a little wider then many of the
animals would have more protection from subsistence poachers looking for bush
meat. There used to be giraffe here once
upon a time. There are still a few
lions. There has never been zebra or wildebeest. There are hippos too but they
choose to live over a day’s walk away from the motel!
We chose to join the walking safari at 7am next morning which
proved to be a bit of a mistake. The
motel was experiencing a busy weekend (mainly white man traffic) and the walk
was overcrowded and noisy; no wildlife to be seen apart from the family of
warthogs we met before the walk even began.
However, 10 minutes before the end of the walk we met the elephants cooling
themselves in the waterhole. Brilliant!
A large part of the afternoon was spent peering at the elephants, about 7 or 8 in a family group, through binoculars. There was a short break for swimming in the motel pool which proved to be a double edged sword in that it was very cool but I ended up with a sunburnt head (fortunately not serious). We also went on a little explore ourselves (me with Paul) and encountered an antelope and foal at close range; mother barked at her foal to avoid the white man!
Day two saw Paul up very early to join an exclusive bird watching safari – 4 twitchers plus guide. Not to be outdone I was also up and about; well, actually I sat at a comfortable viewing spot and let the animals come to me: monkey, squirrel, antelope, loads of birds, a few noisy humans (!), and finally, in the distance, the elephants returned for a good old splash and play!
Later in the morning we were treated to a short canoe ride
where we were privileged to see amazingly iridescent kingfishers, large and
small, a few Nile lizards and the enormous tracks of the elephants where they
come to drink (sadly not today).
During the rest of the afternoon, as we watched a troop of
baboons on the savannah, another very sneaky baboon crept up behind me and
tried to steal my juice! I was amazed by
its speed, dexterity, strength and cheek!
I should have set the two enormous crocodiles we’d spotted onto him!
And so the weekend came
to an end and the prospect of rising at 2.30am to get the first connection back
loomed before us. May be we will return
in the rainy season when the land will be lush and green.
It wasn’t a great Kenyan safari…but for around 100 pounds
each, all in, who’s complaining!
