I have not set any goals for 2025 yet (which is unusual for me), but with the way it’s going, you’d think my goal for this year is to enjoy as much as possible.😂 Why I say this? Well, 2025 has mostly been parte after parte for me so far, especially in February. The “parte” I’m going to be telling you about in this post is the Part 1 of a series of posts I’ll write about a 4-day tour trip I had a few weeks ago.
Hit The Road
The tour began in Tamale and we were headed around Greater Accra, which is on the other side of the country. To make this trip, there’s a normal route and and there’s a newer route. The former is what I’ve used the few times I’ve gone to Accra. The latter however, is untested waters for me, so I was actually really excited to find out that was what we were using on this trip. But little did I know the hitch we were about to face on said road.
Apparently, part of the route along the Eastern Corridor (the name of the road we took) involved taking a ferry at some point around the Bimbilla-Dumbai area where Oti River separates the two towns. We got to the crossing around 1pm, and were informed upon arrival that the ferry had broken down about 4 days prior to our arrival. Interestingly, our tour managers didn’t know this before we arrived. Fortunately (or should I say coincidentally?), a new ferry had just started working that day, so it was a bit of a relief to discover. Now our new headache was the huge 4-day backlog that we had to wait through to cross before we could.
On the bright side, the backlog presented an opportunity for us to see cargo truck drivers display what I consider some of the best and at the same time riskiest driving I’ve ever seen, as they made their ways onto the ship. I lost track of how many times trucks came this 👌 close to tipping over whiles boarding. They were all overloaded and they all boarded the ship in reverse. Crazy is an understatement for the experience.
My Weird Interest in Boats
At the “port”, there were 2 kinds of boats. Wait..lemme rephrase that: there were 3 kinds of boats. Based on size, there were 2 kinds of boats - big and size. However, on the basis of both size, movement mechanics and speed, there were 3 types of boats.
The huge boat (ship), I’m not completely sure what it runs on, but I suspected it’s powered by fuel or something. I initially thought coal (since I saw a certain very dark smoke coming from what appeared to be its downstairs compartment in the lower right side of the ship in this picture), but I’m thinking that is for Titanic-large ships. (Could be wrong). The smaller boats are of two types - one that uses some sort of propeller attached to the end of it, and the other that uses sheer manpower.
This one runs on a motor that is connected at the end of the boat. Check the motors in the picture below.
The boat I’m sitting in in the picture below is one of the smaller boats using the propeller. Let me tell you, those boats are fast! We were initially dazzled by how fast it was because we thought it was moving that fast using manpower.
I love this picture cos it has a similar energy to the picture below which I took 2 years ago
I seem to have a weird superpower of having strangers be thrilled to feature in my photos. Lol
Rare picture of me without any stranger featuring😂
I unfortunately just realized that I don’t have a picture of the boats that are operated by just rowing (sheer manpower) here to show you. But don’t fret, I have a picture of one from a different site which I’ll show you as I go through the tour series.
Anywhoooo…after close to 2 long hours of waiting, bargaining and arguing, we were allowed to board the ferry. It was the beginning of the excitement of the tour for me. This part was not part of the advertised perks of the tour, but since I’ve never seen or been on one before, it was as good as the other experiences in the tour for me.
You see the small space behind the rig the guy in the blue shirt is leaning on? Yeah, that was where my boys stood for that ~very casual~ shower.
Big as fuck, slow as fuck.
Watching the ferry from afar, it was obvious it was slow. But we found out just how slow while impatiently waiting for it to dock to allow passengers off and us on. Took close to 30 minutes, and when it was our own turn to board, it took us about another 30 minutes just to get the ship to turn around from the dock we boarded at, BEFORE we started actually moving. The only way we could tell we were moving was by comparing our positions relative to land objects near us. Lol, talk about parallax error.
I’m thinking that the slow initial velocity was because near the port, it was slower to turn around cos the ship was not immersed in deep enough water to facilitate swift movement. My theory was (sort of) supported by the fact that the ferry got faster the deeper into the water we went. Maybe that was also just because it was easier to move now because it had already mustered and kept compounding its speed at that point. Hell if I know, but lemme not try to go full mechanics on you cos I’ll likely be lying.
Anyways, somewhere in the middle of the ride, something interestingly weird happens - the ship boys take their clothes off in-front of us and proceed to take a bath, fetching from the water we’re riding on like it’s their bucket!😂It was fortunate that the ladies were seated behind us and so couldn’t see, but I doubt that would’ve bothered the boys in the slightest bit anyways, cos it seemed like something very normal they do everyday.
Back to the Voyage
After about an hour, we crossed successfully, boarded our bus and made way for Volta Region which was where we were supposed to camp our first. That, my friends, is another long story I unfortunately won’t be able to tell you because I don’t have photos for. I for sure will tell you about the very first thing on our tour agenda tomorrow, though, so stay tuned for that.