We left Mole Motel and got to Larabanga; the nearest village to the park. We wanted to see the mosque but the villagers were adamant that we had to pay to even go near it ... fed up with so much hassle early in the morning we went back to the 'bus stop' to wait for our bus to Wa. I found a cafe nearby to get a coffee for myself & Maddy whilst she & Dani got the cream crackers & vegemite out for breakfast.
The bus arrived, full, we were offered standing room only and managed to arrange ourselves on the back step. Further along the road a witch doctor jumped on board telling us of a stone which was a miracle cure for scorpion bites, a string which would prevent pregnancy ... he did well, had us all in stitches & seemed to sell a lot ...
Eventually we arrived in Wa. We wanted to cross the border to Gaoua, Burkina Faso a little further north in Lawra over the river so needed to find someone to stamp our passports but being Boxing Day, immigration was closed. We also needed some food, drink & money ... but it was all proving a bit of a problem, so asking a pharmacy that was open to change money the owner sent his son with us to another pharmacy that would do a black market exchange. We settled ourselves in the tro-tro station and got some food & drink and I went of to ask around about transport/immigration options. I discovered that our only real option was to get a tro-tro up to Hamale, the border town in the very north-west corner of Ghana.
Getting on another packed tro-tro we 'sensibly' paid for 4 seats to give us a little more room, it was a long 80km and 2.5hrs on dusty roads to Hamale, Maddy & I had the task of unbraiding Dani's hair en route! We finally pulled up at a police post to discover the driver didn't have a licence and the police needed a bribe to let him continue into town. As soon as we got out we had some guy offer to show us where the border was, we wandered down to it with him and went through the ridiculous formality of showing our yellow fever card - something I've never come across when leaving a country! Our passports stamped we were outside the immigration office when another guy showed up claiming to be Burkinabe and would organise transport the other side. I smelt a rat, his French wasn't very fluent and he was determined to stick with us saying we'd get a lift with his brother. We trudged the 500m between the two borders with Dani saying 'I think I'm going to like Burkina more' and Maddy & I hoping she was right and that we'd all enjoy it more than Ghana.
Burkina's formalities were a lot more relaxed with a lot of welcomes from the immigration officers, it was already 4pm. We spotted a shop nearby and I discovered that the owners were Mauritanian .. we had a chat bought some warm drinks and waited for our guy to return from his 'brothers house'. He told me that I would have to go to his brothers house to negotiate the fare; I refused, asking the brother to come to us if he wanted any business. He turned up and demanded 40,000CFA to get us to Diebougou 60km away. We were getting a lot of aggression from the Ghanaian 'brother' and finally they walked away. I found out where the gare routiere was and left Maddy & Dani with the Mauritanians and our packs to find out if we could get a taxi ... or else it was back to immigration & sleeping on their floor for the night!
On my return I was stunned to find the 'brothers' back, harassing the Mauritanians for telling me where the gare routiere was; they were incredibly aggressive and it finished with the Ghanaian brother getting on the back of a scooter screaming 'I'll burn your shop down'. Watching a herd of cows go past, we wondered what to do when M.Sala turned up, I'd talked to him at the gare routiere and he offered us a minibus and driver for 18,000CFA eventually ... we were on our way in Burkina ...
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