We took a tro-tro from Accra all the way to Aflao, which is the city on the Ghana/Togo border where you can get visas. It is also the dustiest place I have every been in my life.
The beaches were really pretty though!
When we crossed the border,
we took moto-taxis (The Best and Most Dangerous mode of transportation)
to our adorable hotel.
That night, we took a moto-taxi tour of Lome, which was the most fun hour and a half! I couldn't take any pictures, as I was pre-occupied with not dying (Friday night rush hour traffic, no real laws, no helmets), but I took some later of the cool stuff we saw.
Nox got us permission to wander on the docks and take picture. Later a guard chased him down and demanded a bribe, which was totally ridiculous (but common). He paid it, but then he called and got the guard in trouble/fired, so serves him right.
Lome has some really cool architecture!
Pretty blur!
This is where the president does some Serious Business.
After that, we went to the International Museum of the Gulf of Guinea. It was incredible! I could only take a picture of the front of the museum, but it was full of fantastic works of art from around West Africa. And you could TOUCH them. Even the statue that was 2,000 years old. Even the costumes sewn for spirits to inhabit and dance in. And it was only about $1 for students. I totally recommend going there, if you ever find yourself in Togo.
After that, we went to the fetish market, where you can buy voodoo remedies to common ailments. They had dog heads and snake spines and leopard skins and the skull of a hippo. It was really cool and interesting, although I was pretty skeptical of our guide's claim that all the creatures had died naturally and was kinda worried that the fee I paid to look at everything perhaps contributed to poaching. Hopefully not. Anyway, check out these gross pictures!
One of the best parts of the Togo trip, for me, was the delicious food. Lome is more Eurpoean than Accra, and our hotel had a delicious restaurant.
Excellent ice cream! Coconut and chocolate
Pho!!! Cause former French colonies gotta stick together!
Mousse!
Beef with red wine sauce and potatoes with bacon pieces
Okay, all that stuff was really good, but this was the best. Sold for cheap on the streets, it is a salty, crusty-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside baguette, with this guacamole-like stuff spread inside and a hard-boiled egg cut up and spread in there too. Everything was Africa-outside temperature and it was so delicious that we each had one for breakfast and another for lunch the last day in Lome.
Okay, so there was one thing that happened that was not as good. When we went to get our money changed, there were tons of guys on the border offering to do it on the streets. A little sketch, but really you do EVERYTHING on the street in Ghana, so we thought we'd just check the rate with what we'd looked up and be fine. They offered a good rate so we sat down and changed 100 cedis each. They counted the money and we counted and back and forth and when we put the money away, we were all sure we had the right amount. But sometime in there, they had managed to sneak away from our piles; 5,000 CFA (~$10) from me and something like 15,000 CFA from Evelyn and that much plus some of her cedis from Marcella (we suspect they took a little from me and when we didn't see it, they got braver when they counted Evelyn's and Marcella's). We had no clue until we got to the hotel and took out money for dinner. There was a big mixture or fury and respect, because we were all SURE we had watched carefully and counted well and KNEW we had the right amounts. So, as obvious as this should seem, always make sure you change money at a legit place, even if you think you are savvy enough to do it on the street. It's funny, because in Europe I was wary about going anywhere other than a bank cause I didn't want to be ripped off. But here I only thought about the rate, not about them conning me. Ah, lessons learned in Africa.
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