Mole National Park

Ghana doesn’t have quite as diverse range of large mammals compared to some other African Safari hot spots but it is home to lots of national parks which offer a certain amount of refuge to a wide range of wildlife. Out of these, Mole Reserve is the biggest – and with the prospect of spotting wild elephants – probably the most exciting. We had a long and exhausting day of loading the bike and luggage in and out of a series of tro tros and taxis to cover the 380km we needed to reach Larababga (the town on the edge of the park). We had seen barely any other tourists in our first 10 days in Ghana and now we understood why – they were all here in Mole! 

We cycled into the park the next morning early and discovered it offers jeep and walking trips at a fraction of the price to other Safari experiences (a two hour jeep safari costing us just £8 each.) The motel, at £48 per night, sits on the edge of a ridge looking down across a large section of open savannah and two watering holes. And despite the hour long wait for food was luxurious compared to the other places Paddy and I had been staying in so far. I can’t see us spending thousands of pounds on a Safari experience in the future so this was a good compromise! Unfortunately we hadn’t booked the Motel in advance so could only get our second night there. This meant camping in the rather deserted camp site where all the baboons hangout after dark. Slightly surreal but actually quite a fun experience, (despite my mild irrational panic in the night about hungry leopards coming across the tent!)

Our time at Mole was great fun. We took two Safaris out into the park and saw elephants on both trips as well as warthogs, ground hornbills, patas monkeys, Hartebeest and lots and lots of Kobs. The rest of the time was spent lounging on the terrace with beer and binoculars in hand looking out across the park where we could watch elephant bathing, crocodiles creeping and palm nut vultures soaring. We had scorching weather and the motel pool was a good place to cool off ourselves. The first part of the holiday has involved quite a bit of roughing it and pedalling quite hard so we thought we deserved a bit of comfort and rest. Pictures below!