DEE TOURS || TRAVELING FROM LAGOS, NIGERIA TO ACCRA,GHANA via ROAD

I had planned to travel to Ghana by road a million times since I was in school. I wanted a road trip adventure and Ghana seemed like the place to go.

Guess what, it wasn't my first trip to Ghana.

I first visited Ghana in 2009. I went via Arik air and it cost about 40,000 naira for a return ticket. It was an all expense paid trip so I didn't have any worries. 

Fast forward to 2016, I'm almost 30years old (well that's relatively true and that's how I feel these days). I want to travel more and I'm not getting offers of expense paid trips. With about four pages of my planner filled with wander lists of countries and cities to see, I decided on planning budget trips.

First off was Ghana, I messaged and reached out to everyone in my circle that I would love to experience Ghana with in January and I came up with a 40/45,000 naira budget for bus ticket and hotels.

I hoped that if the bus cost about 20,000 naira then two people could split the cost of a standard hotel room for four nights at say 10/12,000 per night.

This was a good plan until I realized my passport was expired and I had to spend an addition 30,000 naira renewing it.

This was a bad decision.

So why did I do it?

I went to check the transport companies that had been suggested to me for the travel; ABC Transport and Chisco about a week before the trip.

I realized that the transportation cost had increased a bit and there were extra costs for non passport holders and virgin passport holders.

By the way Virgin means not used on the road.

So no matter the stamps if you do not have a border stamp via road you still have to pay.

For ABC transport,

It cost 20,400 for a return ticket

2,000 extra for a virgin passport

5,000 extra for a non passport holder using an I.d card

6,000 extra for a non I.d user.

With this extra costs in mind, i decide to spend the extra charges to renew my passport so that I don't have to waste N5000 on settling border officials.

(At this point I hadn't even realized that the N5000 applied both ways making it N10,000 extra).

Anywoo I applied for a passport and I still haven't gotten it as at now, they claim that they have no passport booklets.

I would be writing a review on this soon.

Moving on, After almost going crazy with the news of the passport dissapointment, I shook it off and decided to just get it over with, as to postpone it is to cancel it.

I chose the Easter holidays because we only needed two days leave off work which didn't affect our annual leave so much.

I bought our tickets the day before the trip to secure our seats.

The ABC take off times were 6am for the first bus and 6.30am for the second.

We left my house were we converged at to 6 and got to their Festac office at about 6.

We weighed our boxes, checked our passports and I.d cards, paid the extra charges in cash, got our boxes examined and got boarded.

I had been advised by my cousin to choose front seats because of the toilet at the back so I chose the third role; seats 10, 11,12 for three of us and it came in helpful when someone decided to desecrate the toilet that was meant for peeing alone.

Be advised to steer clear of liquids or food you are intolerant to a day to the trip.

I live for liquids and I don't pee often so I was okay.

We settled in nicely, the bus had enough leg-room and they had a t.v that showed ibo and old movies which was ok I guess.

The bus served us twice, first, food and water then biscuit and juice.

The food was crappy so we didn't touch it at all.

A had hooked us up with three plates of peppered chicken which we ate till Togo, so we didn't get hungry till Ghana border where we bought the smallest suya ever or didn't we? I can't remember.

Talking about border, everything was pretty smooth and we didn't get to come down from the bus till we crossed the Togo border, we weren't allowed to take pictures.

I managed to sneak the one above, but had to stop immediately a border police approached us.

I had to show him my phone to convince him I didn't take pictures.( I showed him my selfie folder..lol)

We didn't need to do anything but walk through the border to Togo.

The next border we came down and were delayed for about 2/3 hours was the Ghanaian border, we got our luggage checked and still had to wait for the bus to get cleared.

I slept through most of this as I was hungry and tired.

Finally at about 2am we alighted opposite shoprite in osu were we boarded a cab to our hotel.

We didn't change money at the borders which turned out a blessing because we would have been scammed a bit so we got money from the hotel assistant to pay the cab off.

I then had to negotiate the hotel cost because we ended up being three not four and the cost needed to be reasonable. We got a double bed room, pushed the beds together and stayed together.

I won't be reviewing or mentioning the hotel because they had no wifi and we didn't take there breakfast.

It was just a makeshift, a place to sleep at the end of the day.

I had people who had stayed there prior and I did the remaining research on Jovago.

Time for exploring right? But guess what I found out when we woke up in the morning? Or what happened the day we were leaving Ghana? Or better still check for the next part of this post coming soon .

Ever been to Ghana? Or planned a road trip? Do you have a wander list? What cities are on it?

Do let me know.