Tamale, Ghana

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Our posts are getting a little out of sequence as we have been travelling. The photos from the air in Benin have only just been added, so we are getting a bit behind. When possible we will add the photos of the bigger mud castles in Togo. Today we arrived in Tamale from Yendi and we are staying here for the next couple of nights at least. We have found an ideal place to park in the grounds of the Tamale Institute for Cross Cultural Studies, which has a guesthouse as well and the Jungle Bar terrace close by. The receptionist Abigail and one of the tutors, Sylvester, have been very helpful and friendly and within 30 mins of arrival Abigail suggested their on site housekeeper should do our laundry, so we have given her everything we have for washing and it's already out on the line.

One of the really enjoyable parts of our travelling is that we are meeting such kind, friendly people wherever we go and they in turn introduce us to others.  Our host in Yendi last night was Don. We chose to stay at his guesthouse as we had both air conditioning and fan in the room and were able to have a shower without emptying all the things we store in our own shower in the Enterprise. We woke in the night feeling very cold and had to use our own bedcovers to warm up. If the temperature in the Enterprise drops under 26C at night we feel quite chilly! We have been keeping up with BBC News whenever we can and see that the UK and Europe are having a very cold spell.

The Harmattan wind has indeed arrived and blows quite strongly at times, but not every day is windy so we hope for a break to make a flight in Ghana. The downside is that the atmosphere is left full of dust from the Sahara and visibility is very poor. Tamale has an airport, but it is probably too large to allow us to fly there, we have yet to investigate. A longer flight than in Togo would be nice. Chris has a list (somewhere) of small air clubs in Ghana so it might be possible to find one of these. Between Yendi and Tamale there are vast 'cotton deserts' where the harvested cotton crop has been burnt off leaving large areas of waste ground, but they are not inviting places to take a balloon to.

A very happy birthday today to our grandson Alexander who is already 6 years old. How time flies by. I have another treasure for you Alexander - an intricately woven weaver bird's nest which I found on the ground amongst the rocks of the Sindou Peaks in Burkina Faso. I think it blew out of a tree before it was finished as it appears unused.

The TICCS where we are staying does not have wifi so we are using an Internet Cafe for the first time in our travels, which is just across the road and very convenient. We are using the fast server here to investigate fully onward travel from Ghana. We would like to go via Cote d'Ivoire to Liberia so long as the travel situation is relatively safe.