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| Breakfast at Treasureland Hotel in Kumasi, Ghana |
The included breakfast at the Treasure Land Hotel is
fantastic. They give you three Nescafe
sackets, Milo, tea, toast with butter and jam, a Spanish omelet and fruit. What up with that…. love it.
Met Laura (she is from the States and living with her Ghanaian
husband in Kumasi…met her in Accra) at the hotel and we took off to tour
Kumasi. I assume that Laura knows the ins and out of this city…. oh,
how wrong I was…. and the adventure begins…. Laura is the Best and Worst Tour
Guide Ever…got us totally lost several times but that is what travel is all
about right…the adventure of it all.
Getting there is half the fun my friends.
Kumasi is the second largest city in Ghana with a population
around 1.5 million. It feels much
bigger than Accra to me. It is a
busy, active city to be sure. Kumasi
is the only modern capital of the Ashanti
Region and was the capital of the Ashanti
State for three centuries. The
center of town in called Adum and
has a crazy, busy market place than you could and should spend hours lost
in.
One thing I loved about Kejetia
Market (the central market) is the old, abandoned railroad track that is
now the walking path through parts of the market. Kumasi is the first place I have felt at all hassled by
anyone but still nothing like many parts of Asia. Kajetia Market is the largest market in all of Western
Africa. There is also a major tro
tro station at the market and it is out of control. Dodging tro tros and Yutongs is quite the feat but good fun
in the maze of Kejetia Market.
The area was so busy that I didn’t want to take my camera
out to get a shot of the old, abandoned building painted three stories high
with the OMO logo. It was very
cool indeed.
We decided to go to the National
Cultural Center for a break.
Took a tour of the Prempreh II
Jubillee Museum (5 Cedi with a guide). It is a tiny museum but with the guide telling of the
Ashanti history it was well worth it.
The grounds of the National Cultural Center are a bit of an oasis in
this noisy, bustling city. My
friend Laura spent some time shopping, as there are a number of art markets on
the grounds of the Cultural Center.
We headed up Roman Hill to a beautiful old church and
happened to find a tiny tro tro station behind it and as it turns out one of
them was heading our direction. So
the deal with tro tro is that you yell or hit the minivan wall or ceiling to
let the driver know you want off.
For a traveler like me I don’t recognize where I want to get off so I
either find tro tro that finish at my destination or I ask the driver or
someone to tell me when to get off.
It usually works.
I assumed Laura knew where we were to get off as she has
done it on a regular basis for several months. As we passed an area that looked familiar even to me she
turns to me and says, “hey that’s Tech” (our stop) as if she is just showing me
the sights. A bit of time goes by
and the city has turned into suburbs and lots of green rolling hills. She has missed our stop by a good 15
minutes and we are well on our way out of town. We ask a girl next to us and after some time figure
out we are on a tro tro to another city.
After passing through several villages I stop laughing and
we tell people on the tro tro that we should have gotten on 30 minutes
ago. After many good laughs by all
the pull off the road in the middle of nowhere and put us on a tro tro back to
the city but it is broken down and night has set in.
Not much time passes and another tro tro goes by and we are
off again. It was a wicked fancy
tro with what looks like a stripper pole up front (my first Pimp Tro). Our driver wearing sunglasses at night
and driving like a mad man (this is my favorite kind of tro tro driver by the
way) we get back in no time.
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