Onward to the Green Turtle.
Tammy had heard of an ecolodge called the "Green Turtle", and she phoned to make reservations for us. It's several hours away, and we've been told that the last part of the trip is on an absolutely awful road. So we arrange a ride for the entire distance with a taxi driver who works out of the Oasis and who says he knows the road, and then we go off to hunt for a real breakfast (real coffee? jam?) and a place to exchange currency. (Almost no one accepts credit cards in Ghana.)
We tried to have breakfast at a Western hippie-type restaurant we had spotted the day before, but it didn't open until 8 a.m. So we walked to what we called the "sewer place", a little restaurant across from the Castle museum and adjacent to an open sewer. It did smell pretty bad, but the breakfast was good. Our first "filtered" coffee of the trip: French press style. The scrambled eggs were good, soft and squishy instead of flat and leathery. And there was jam!
While we were walking along the street that morning, I noted how people were living. Where do the people in the little shop-stands live? Well, I think some live right behind the stands. Little children were being bathed in basins right on the sidewalk, and children were eating breakfast from bowls there next to the street. Often there was some sort of structure behind which they could have some privacy.
Back to the Oasis to start our trip to the Green Turtle. We started the trip at 9:30 am. The taxi was beat up, had no shocks, and was stinky. The last town before the predicted bad stretch of road was about the poorest town we went through in west Africa. People in it lived almost right in the street. The sewer stink wafted into the taxi. There were huge ruts in the main road of the town. Trash was everywhere.
The last hour of the trip was, indeed, a real 4WD challenge, and there we were in a beat up 2WD car with over 200,000 miles on it. The driver had to stop twice when the fuel line on the bottom of the car broke. I was impressed with how he and other drivers knew how to get cars working again. Guess they have to do it a lot.
But, at 12:30 pm we made it successfully to the Green Turtle! After Tammy the pit-bull convinced the person at the desk that we did indeed have a reservation (the text message was on her phone to prove it), we settled into the bar on the ocean and later our ecohut and even later the beach and the waves. That's the next blog.
the awful road to the Green Turtle
the awful road to the Green Turtle
the bar at the Green Turtle
the bar at the Green Turtle
Fufu, a dog at the Green Turtle
Next post: At the Green Turtle.
We tried to have breakfast at a Western hippie-type restaurant we had spotted the day before, but it didn't open until 8 a.m. So we walked to what we called the "sewer place", a little restaurant across from the Castle museum and adjacent to an open sewer. It did smell pretty bad, but the breakfast was good. Our first "filtered" coffee of the trip: French press style. The scrambled eggs were good, soft and squishy instead of flat and leathery. And there was jam!
While we were walking along the street that morning, I noted how people were living. Where do the people in the little shop-stands live? Well, I think some live right behind the stands. Little children were being bathed in basins right on the sidewalk, and children were eating breakfast from bowls there next to the street. Often there was some sort of structure behind which they could have some privacy.
Back to the Oasis to start our trip to the Green Turtle. We started the trip at 9:30 am. The taxi was beat up, had no shocks, and was stinky. The last town before the predicted bad stretch of road was about the poorest town we went through in west Africa. People in it lived almost right in the street. The sewer stink wafted into the taxi. There were huge ruts in the main road of the town. Trash was everywhere.
The last hour of the trip was, indeed, a real 4WD challenge, and there we were in a beat up 2WD car with over 200,000 miles on it. The driver had to stop twice when the fuel line on the bottom of the car broke. I was impressed with how he and other drivers knew how to get cars working again. Guess they have to do it a lot.
But, at 12:30 pm we made it successfully to the Green Turtle! After Tammy the pit-bull convinced the person at the desk that we did indeed have a reservation (the text message was on her phone to prove it), we settled into the bar on the ocean and later our ecohut and even later the beach and the waves. That's the next blog.
the awful road to the Green Turtle
the awful road to the Green Turtle
the bar at the Green Turtle
the bar at the Green Turtle
Fufu, a dog at the Green Turtle
Next post: At the Green Turtle.
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