Recommendations from our Family RoadTrip in Ghana 2012/13

over new year’s my wife, little Moritz (16 months) and myself undertook a wonderful two week roadtrip in Ghana. We had such a splendid time that we hallily share our travel route and esp. the links to the mostly excellent low budget beach resorts we enjoyed staying in.

1) DreamLand @ Ada Foa – run by very nice and trustworthy Ibrahim, dreamland was setup by Beate from Bavaria about 10 years ago. Conveniently Ibrahim picked us up from the airport in Accra and about 2.5 hours after we arrived in Ada we enjoyed a nice rum-cola at our terrace looking at the nightly ocean. We had a very nice room with bathroom (about 65 cedis) but most people stayed in bambo huts for about 20 cedis.

2) Big Milly’s @ Kokrobite – possibly one of the oldest backpacker beach resorts in this area, Big Milli’s is a very professional but still cosy and beautiful tourist ecosystem. The staff and folks who run the little stalls in and outside of the backyard have evolved to provide a dynamic equilibrium feeding of the constant stream of travelers passing through.

Alternatively we can also recommend Kokrobite Gardens, just around the corner. Run by a very nice italian couple, the place has pretty good pizza and pasta as well as little wooden huts scattered in a sanctuary of a garden.

3)  Mighty Victory @ Cape Coast – when we arrived my wife wasn’t amused at all. After the very beautiful beach spots we had stayed at before the Mighty Victory Hotel struck us as a pretty undesirable place. However we came to the agreement that it was quite a suitable, and, given the other options, even the most suitable place to stay in Cape Cost. One might however consider to just stop for some hours in Cape Cost, visit the famous fort or do some shopping and continue to Hans Cottage (which features a pond with a dozen or so crocodiles and which was recommended to us repeatedly). Especially given that the cottage is situated about half way between Cape Coast and Kakum National Park – an attraction you should not miss while in the area – this seems a pretty good option.

4) Ko-Sa @ Ampenyi – we found our favorite place in Ghana only about 40min west of Cape Coast. Both the location as well as the style & architecture of Ko-Sa are perfect. It is literally build on the beach, which is guarded by a set of rocks that build perfectly protected bigger and smaller swimming- and kids-playing-pools (as well as protect the land from the BIG problem of erosion found almost everywhere at the ghanaian coast). The dutch owners build a very snugly, big and light-weight wooden restaurant that reminds one of indonesian huts (probably some of the best food we had in Ghana). The rooms in the round clay huts are quite small and bath and toilet are shared but everything is very well kept, clean and with a price of 30 cedi you get very good value for your travel budget.

5) Yellow Rose of Princess Town – by far the most obscure and interesting place we traveled to, the Yellow Rose is run by Hartmut and Renate from East-Berlin. It would take an extra blogpost or better a book to share the amazing stories of Hartmut and Renate’s lives in socialist east-germany, so let’s just say that they are coming to Princess Town for more than 20 years and have build a solid (german) guesthouse/restaurant three years ago with crocodiles chilling out at the banks of the lagoon behind the house and and monkeys visiting from their mangrove play grounds.
For the more adventurous the option to stay at the prussian built Friedrichsburg might be even more appealing. The fort is pretty much falling apart and has no running water or electricity – but the views from the outside “towers” are amazing and the old caretaker has setup one double bed (with mosquito net) for people who want to sleep outside.
Importantly the last ca. 15km of the road to Princess Town are quite bad and after heavy rain (during the raining season) it is regularly impossible to reach the village for some days.

6) on our way back we stopped at Anomabo Beach Resort – which we first thought was way to expensive, but in the end we were really appeased as the 35 Dollar we paid for a very nice hut without bath included a spectacular breakfast. They also offer huts with bath for 65$ and executive huts with bath directly at the beach front for 85$. The whole venture and especially the executive huts are however in great peril as the beach is snapped away by the Atlantic at alarming speed. If no action is taken the first huts will be destroyed in the next months by the erosion. The staff at Anomabo was not as nice, but the beach and the restaurant were really good.

7) we have no recommendation for a place to stay in Accra where we spent the last two days, because we stayed at the house of a friend we had made in DreamLand.

As for traveling with a baby (or if traveling in a mini-van packed with double the people allowed in western countries, plus four chicken), we can highly recommend to ask the folks of the resorts/hotels to arrange for a responsible driver with a (relatively) decent car. We ended up paying a total of about 300€ for all the 7 long journeys; and in fact we were so happy with our driver Bob from Ko-Sa that he came to pick us up for all the trips since Ko-Sa.

For my friends and peers here are pictures of the trip (feel free to ask me to include you in list of folks who can access the pix).

As you can read between the lines Birte, Moritz and myself had a wonderful time and we can only highly recommend to explore this warm-hearted, beautiful and very very interesting country. If you find any information here needs corrections and/or you have additional recommendations, please shoot me an email or comment below. Happy travels

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