Mole, Mole, Mole National Park (yes that was for you Austin Power’s movie buffs and that is how it is pronounced) is Ghana’s largest wildlife refuge in Northern Ghana about a 3 hour bus ride from Tamale.
It is a grassland savannah.
We saw elephants, antelope, warthogs, monkeys and thieving baboons. The nature reserve is very well kept. The park staff goes hunting for poachers, but it's still a problem.
It was a great day, started by a 4am bus ride organized by the YMP Fellows. I was up at the crack of dawn racing to meet the bus. I was passing by one of the mosques when the call to prayer embraced me in the dark of the morning. I hadn’t realized that I would be the only one up with only the goats on the road. I made it to AfriLEAD Institute and was greeted by others and on our way to Mole.
We went on a guided hike through the park to come upon the 3 large Savannah Elephants. I heard a comment that they were “big as a house” and, yes they were. I felt it was strange as everyone is taking “selfies” with the elephant in the background, the “new tourist”. Yes, I’m guilty of them too. I’ve been doing selfies since I had a film camera, remember those? They were way more fun when you couldn’t delete the photos and it would just be a surprise when you eventually developed the film.
After the hike some of us sat by the pool and enjoyed the few and a few refreshing drinks and shared lots of laughs. Larissa, another Canadian I met in Tamale and I stayed for two more days. We sat by the pool, and I just stared out into this vast landscape, watching water buffalo and antelope watering below. It was a peaceful, glorious weekend. Except for the thieving baboons! Stealing our precious Don Simon juice (boxed sangria). We were up the next day at 6am for a bird tour, and well that didn’t happen, apparently you have to book it, so we did our own tour, which we were finally asked to please stop wandering around the park It is dangerous. We went on a driving safari and saw a few more elephants, antelope and monkeys.
I hope I can go back one more time during the dry season, and watch the animals gather at the watering hole. It’s almost like a self-guided safari. I also need to take some more photos as my computer deleted all my photos, like 6700 of them. Yes, it was a Macbook. So I was able to recover only some. Why I’ve not posted for a while, saddened by my loss of photo history (I do have backups at home).
