At about 4:00am we left Hotel Ingot in Accra, and tried to find a taxi to take us to the bus station. One hailed us from a side road, before going back to where it had been, and paying a scantily clad woman some money outside a house. Drugs or prostitution we obviously decided! He didn't really seem to know where he was taking us, and it was lucky that we left plenty of time before getting on a 5:30am coach to Aflao - the border town on the Ghanaian side. From there we could walk the 500m or so across the border into Togo. Country number seven!
We changed whatever cedis we had on us back to CFA (the common currency, like the Euro, for most of West Africa), and then had to try and get rid of a guy called Larry who "wanted to help". We kept trying to say thanks but we can walk there by ourselves, but he tagged along. It didn't help matters that he had a voice like Joe Pasquale!
After the Ghana exit stamp, we headed for the Togo side (although the general chaos at the border made it difficult to know where to go). A guard asked to see our visas, which we knew we could buy at the border. He started off incredibly angry ("Why don't you get before?!"), but calmed down and took an incredibly long time to do his JOB and issue the seven day transit visa. At the end of it he was joking along with us, possibly to do with the crazy Catholic minister reading from some magazine and praising God, but also possibly due to the 'Driver is Chauffeur in English' joke. Always goes down well with the Frenchies!
The border was scam central, with hundreds of people passing through every fifteen minutes. Anyone who looked slightly wealthy was stopped and had to pay a 'tax' to the lazy guards; sitting in the shade with their feet up, doing nothing at all, apart from fleecing people. They took bribes of about 1000CFA each person, so must have taken in about 50,000 while we were there for under an hour - £80, for a country as poor as Togo. Terrible really.
Lomè, capital of Togo, a very thin country squashed with Benin between Ghana and Nigeria, is right on the border, and we were in Hotel Gallion within minutes. The main road in Lomè was under construction (as most things seem to be in some state of over here), and was just a wide, sandy track running parallel to the beach. The French-run hotel we stayed in was quite expensive, but was in a capital city, and they were probably shocked at the amount of washing we gave them after ten days on the beach! Had to be done though. We'd usually do our own, but a) it stunk and b) our sink was the size of a tea cup!
After a strange encounter with a possibly diabetic Ghanaian man, we ate some cheap riz gras in a small restaurant before heading to the Benin Embassy to sort out our visas for the final country. We eventually found the embassy, after a bit of a lost wander around the sandy streets of Lomè, possibly down to the quality of the map, possibly Barney's map reading skills... The receptionist was very friendly, but that is more than can be said for the lady who issued the visas, but more on that next blog.
I shot off to send my Christmas postcards off 3 days AFTER the day itself - somehow I don't think they'll arrive in time, maybe for next Christmas haha! Another cheap maquis (street food) dinner for about £1 and we were well on course for budgeting well in Togo.
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