We enjoyed our relaxing stay by the Volta River and then caught a 'tro -tro' or minivan to Ho. A short way along the road the back door of the van flew open and my backpack and a few sacks bounced across the road. Someone hadn't tied the back doors properly and being overloaded there would have been a lot of pressure on the partly closed door.
We passed through a lot of tropical vegetation with coconut palms, red palm nuts, bananas, mangoes, cassava and teak trees.
Stayed at a simple hotel with a noisy airconditioner. We walked around the streets looking for somewhere to change Ghana cedi currency into Togo CFAs. None of the banks we went to changed anything other than US dollars and Euros. We were told to go to the market and find moneychangers there who would change our cedis. We were reluctant to do that as we had heard that they fold notes, give you counterfeit notes, or give you bits of paper in the middle of real notes. We hoped we would find someone at the border rather than risk being ripped off.
We had four novels that we had finished reading and had not been able to find a secondhand bookshop to trade or buy some replacements. At a street stall we met a man from Liberia selling a few books. He had a lot of religious books, old school or university text books, and a few very old and yellowing novels. We managed to convince him to take our books and we gave him some money for his books. As we do not like to go out late in the evenings because of the street crime, we like to be able to do some reading if the lights in our room allow it. More often than not the 14 watt eco-light bulbs are useless to read by and we have to resort to reading in bed with our headlights.
We managed to find a restaurant not far up the street to eat and in no time the place filled up with volunteer workers meeting their colleagues and friends for a few drinks and dinner. We had not seen any white faces when we walked about the town at all.
After only one night in Ho, as there is not much to see or do there, we found a tro -tro in the market to take us to Hohoe. All tro -tros have to fill up before they leave so while we were waiting for passengers we managed to find a moneychanger. He was very honest and we were able to get CFAs at a reasonable price.
It was a short ride to Hohoe and we found a taxi to take us to a hotel. The hotel had four rooms with little balconies. There were two girls in the room beside us who were working in the town for Peace Corp and a young German couple doing volunteering work. Other than giving us a hello they didn't engage with us.
The restaurant, according to our guide, had the best food in town but we found it not so good. It was a family run place that employed young girls from a vocational training course. When we ate in the restaurant, the television was on a Nigerian channel showing a religious leader called Prophet Moses. He was shown making paralised men walk and blind women see etc. The owner's wife spent hours watching the miracles. There were only two channels on the TV and Prophet Moses seemed to be on all the time.
This sign was outside a shop in Hohoe.
Another shop sign. We are constantly amused by some of the signs on shops, minivans, and businesses. This one was on the front of a minivan, "Surely goodness and mercy should follow me". This was on a tyre changing stall " God's Finger Fitting Workshop". The herbal clinic was called "I'm Saved" and for the farmers' there was "The Miracle Chemical Store". A lottery kiosk was named "Hope in God".
We caught a van to a small village called Vli where we walked through the tropical forest to a water fall. On the cliffs beside the falls were millions of fruit bats and in the evening they would fly off but we only saw a few flying about.
There were quite a few butterflies around some of the drying puddles.
There was not much else to do in Hohoe and we had a set entry date on our visa for Togo so we had to wait until we could cross the land border into Togo.
