We rose early on Tuesday morning and packed our bags, all three of them! After a short conference we agreed to leave one of the bags with Uncle and Auntie, as our hosts like to be called, to be collected when we return to Accra at the end of our trip. We then left, and had to wait maybe ten seconds for a taxi to take us to the bus station at Kaneshie, we had just missed one so had to wait about five mins for the next, 4cedis each plus 2 for luggage, about five pounds, we asked our taxi driver how long the trip would be and were told maybe one and half hours. As we got out of the taxi we were swamped by boys who grabbed our bags and carried them for us to the bus queue. Where we waited for the next bus to arrive. Good opportunity for a cigarette we thought but no sooner had we lit up than an armed policeman appeared out of nowhere and told us to put them out. We have noticed that very few Ghanaians smoke and are mostly quite strongly anti-smoking. I might add though that where we were standing in the bus queue there was a pall of smoke rising from pile of burning rubber on the pavement about which the policeman had no concerns at all. When the bus arrived our porters suddenly re-appeared and pushed our rucksacks under two seats at the back of the bus. We boarded and waited while the bus filled up , they will not leave until the bus is full, eventually the time came and we were off, slightly hot but ok for an hour and a half, well, as you may have guessed it took slightly more. Three and a half hours, actually although we had two pit stops on the way. Pit stop is the right word for it and as soon as the bus stopped it was surrounded by girls with huge trays and boxes balanced on their heads. Fresh water in bottles and in little sealed plastic bags, bread, pastries, biscuits, fruit juice, phone sims, plantain chips, peanuts, and quite incongruously, I thought, tooth brushes and tooth paste. The stop was manic with people leaning out of every window and shouting for what they wanted. And after about two minutes the bus started off again with passengers still completing their transactions out of the windows. else, eventually we got there and me being me (this is Mrs M writing now) everyone is getting into your bubble, not good! I needed space, we were hot, sweaty and my legs where not sure they would work again, but we got a taxi to Hans Cottage Botel which was looking good, swimming pool, restaurant and some grounds to look around, got our room key and relaxed for a while.

Hans Cottage Botel is an interesting tourist project. It is a cluster of buildings built on low stilts over a lake with concrete walkways connecting them. The lake has about 12 crocodiles although we have seen only three, but hay ho! Who's counting? There is a huge variety of exotic birds around the hotel, called a botel because it's a bit like sitting on a boat (it's a Ghanaian thing!) , most noticeably the Orange Weaver Birds which had formed a colony of their distinctive hanging nests right by the restaurant. There are also some fish farm lakes between the hotel accommodation blocks housing thousands of catfish, although when I asked the man who was feeding them if they were cat fish he said "No they are Mad Fish!" (pretty sure he meant Mud fish) This place is definitely a "Chill-out Zone" And sitting in the bar with a beer in the evening listening to the exotic night noises, the peculiar whistles of the crocodiles, the constant background chirping of the cicadas and crickets and the occasional splash of something huge moving in the lake, unseen in the inky blackness, was an truly unforgettable experience.

The restaurant is quite busy with quite a lot of fairly wealthy looking Ghanaians but we found the menu a little limited, although what we had was quite tasty. BUT! When we came down on the Wednesday morning looking forward to the "Inclusive buffet breakfast" what greeted us was a little disappointing! There was a plate of toast and a bain marie containing a pile of very hard and greasy fried eggs. The saving grace was the home grown organic Passion fruit juice, grown and produced on site. Me being me, I ate a couple of eggs (well we had paid for them!) and actually they didn't taste too bad, a little cold perhaps, very greasy maybe and as hard as bullets but were here for the Ghanaian experience. Actually they were bloody awful! But the location made up for it. I have never eaten breakfast watched by a Crocodile before!

After breakfast I went off for a walk in the jungle which surrounds the hotel. Mandy chose to relax with her book by the pool. Every now and then I came across bungalows in little clearings. These were not the houses of local people. I discovered later that various Europeans had had houses built in the area and then left them under the care of a house boy. Most of the buildings were unfinished and very scruffy and run down. There was a network of tracks and eventually I began to feel a little lost. I had heard that there was an Ostrich Farm in the area and I was hoping to find it but eventually I found my way to a village by the road and followed the road back to the Hotel.

We couldn't leave the Ostrich Farm undiscovered so Mandy and I set of in search of it. It was well signposted and we found an old man who said he was in charge of the Ostriches and took us to a very elaborate gate house where he showed us a price list which said Foreigners were 5 cedis each so we paid our fee and followed the little man on down the track. There was no one else in sight and after a short walk into the bush, stepping over a couple of columns of soldier ants we got to two dilapidated pens containing about 8 ostriches. The man fed them with some branches and I tried to take 10 cedis worth of photos. It was interesting that there had been about 10 times more investment made in signs and a gate house than in the accommodation for the poor birds. Yet another example of the Ghanaian experience.

On the way back to the hotel my stomach started to make some unusual rumblings and we spent the afternoon sitting by the pool chatting to some locals and enjoying the warmth of both the sun and these friendly people. The rumblings got more intense! That evening neither of us wanted to do anything more than laze about and read and I felt it was wise to take an Imodium.