Rare Is Beautiful: My Rare Experience In: GHANA

I wouldn't say I've always wanted to visit Ghana, I just really wanted to travel for so long with no particular place in my mind ( well I had Cotonou on my mind for the longest time and I still do). One day, Ghana randomly came to mind and I kept asking myself why I never thought about it. I decided to take a SOLO trip and Ghana was my first/ second choice because it is closer and I think I just always underestimated Ghana and didn't just imagine myself going there but you see, with growth in my love to explore and travel, I can see the beauty in any location and so the planning began, well not too much planning but I tried.

I checked the flight prices and I wasn't too pleased, can we all just talk about this exchange rate and recession? Epppp. So, I decided to go by road! This was going to save me A TON of money and give me access to explore more so why not? To be safe, I did spend a good time researching how safe it was going by road and the process involved. I did my research and decided to use ABC transport.

The ABC transport office is located in festac, Lagos. They have a website where you can book your tickets, you can also go to their office to reserve a seat a day before or go very early the same day and if you're lucky you would get a seat (you most likely would get a seat, it isn't that deep) , I wasn't able to book online and I sure wasn't going to travel all the way to festac so I called to reserve ( I had to plead though).

I arrived at the office by 5:30am just to make sure my seat was actually reserved and thankfully it was but I still had to hustle to get a good seat (I love the window seat, Love). After the payment was done, I proceeded to get my bag searched and tagged which thankfully didn't take too long.

An issue came up because the driver or the person in charge of arranging the boxes/bags told some of us to put our bags in the regular ABC bus because there wasn't space on the bus and this meant that we were going to wait maybe an extra 3-5 hours in Ghana for the bus to arrive or come back the next day, real jokes. I wasn't here for all that, we had to settle (give money) the guy in the end just for our bags to be on the same bus. I was a bit pissed but glad at the same time, at least my bag was in the same vehicle.

The bus was comfortable in my opinion with air conditioner and a good sound system. The journey was pretty smooth and interesting with the different passengers and the interesting driver, we made SEVERAL stops to cross borders (Lagos-Cotonou-lome-Ghana.) and get our passports stamped. We didn't have to come down till we were entering Togo , most of us also changed money at the border, the exchange rate wasn't pleasing to the ears at all. I can't remember the exact rate, it was either 0.87 , 8.7 or 87 but for #26000, you get 226 cedis, it used to be way better so I was a bit disappointed. I would advice you change your money when you get to Ghana and not at the border, I can't say which is better but you have a better chance of not getting scammed.

Nigeria to Accra, Ghana by road is roughly 14-15 hours using a "sprinter" and including all the stops at the various borders, we reached Accra,Ghana at 7:30/8pm and my journey wasn't over. Yes, my final destination was Kumasi so I had to travel from Accra to Kumasi (another 4-5 hours drive. I'm used to traveling by road for LONG hours like this so I was prepared.

I reached Kumasi at 2am and fell asleep almost immediately because I had to explore kumasi the next day but that would be in a different post, stay tuned :)