the search continues...

The Ghanain attitude to religion is often funny - especially the way they name their businesses! Some other favourites so far are "God's Way Sharpening" and "Jesus is Mine Comm. Centre".

I'm starting to get into the food here a bit more, although I haven't yet tried Goat Light Soup, and have deliberately avoided something called Kenke, which is a kind of dough made from fermented grain and apparently tastes disgusting. But the red-red (sauce made from black-eyed beans, tomato and chilli and served with fried plaintain) is really good and palava, a garlicy spinachy sauce served with boiled yam is also delicious.

Sadly there doesn't seem to be much in the way of Aulacode (or Autiger as it is usually called on menus) in Accra - we tried to order it at an Ivoirian restaurant in Lome but they didn't have any. Apparently it's quite nice. However I did noticed on some long road trips in Benin men standing by the side of the road holding up what looked like dead aulacodes for sale. Yum.

Turns out to have been a good idea to leave Togo - five people were killed in protests the next day.

Yes we're in Ghana, and it rocks. We spent a few days at a seaside village hoping to spot some baby turtles hatching in the evenings, but had no luck - possibly because of the moon.

Today we arrived in the capital city, Accra, which really illustrates how Ghana is doing much better than its neighbours - maybe it's because we've been in Benin, but this seems almost like a developed world city. There are big buildings, some trees, and traffic is mostly cars instead rather than little motorbikes. It's also much breezier, and less dusty and polluted here. And pretty much everyone speaks English... So I'm very happy to be here.

With typical luck, we have ended up in Togo just a few days after the President died. He had been in power for 39 years and the democratic status was fairly ambivalent, to put it mildly, but stable. His son has been put in power by the military and is promising elections soon, but neighbouring countries are really not happy, and a whole bunch of regional leaders are heading here to Lome today and tomorrow to hold a big meeting with the new leadership. Togo was the first African country to have a post-colonial coup and one of the few to have seen little political change in the last few decades, so it is quite significant for the whole continent.

Things seem pretty calm now, apart from most of the shops being closed as part of a general strike, but it is difficult to tell how it will turn out so we might split to Accra tonight.

It's a shame because Togolese people seem exceptionally friendly and we quite like Lome, even though it is supposedly unsafe at night and our hotel is possibly the filthiest we've stayed in so far (and that's up against some stiff competition). But the dude who runs the hotel is nice, there's lots of yummy street food stalls with yam and plantain and chilli nearby, and the kids are super cute (again, there's some tough competition from their peers in Benin).

In case you're wondering, DFAT doesn't even publish travel advisories for Togo although the UK advised against it when the border with Ghana was briefly closed on Sunday, but that will presumably be reviewed again if it stays quiet.

After two days of travel (including one of the worst train trips ever), numerous conversations, subterfuge and three days stuffing around trying to organise to share a 4wd and driver with fickle, cheapskate French tourists, we finally managed to go on a safari with an unusually sweet & sincere French dude we had met back in Abomey (ok I'll stop the French-bashing now). West Africa's national parks aren't really set up for tourists, but apparently Parc du Pendjari in North Benin is one of the easiest to visit. The others must really suck.

After getting up at 5.30 and driving for nearly 2 hours we got to the park, and started out sitting on the roofracks of the car (yes; I know 4wds can overturn easily!) - this got too hot for me quite quickly but Dave and Christophe were up there for hours. Didn't see any lions but lots of gazelles and other hooved bounding creatures, hippos and elephants.

Near the end of the day we saw a group of elephants, a family as it turned out - a couple of smaller ones went scurrying off into the bush. But the biggest elephant hung around, and after a minute or two decided he'd had enough of us and our cameras and charged towards us, trumpeting and flapping his ears. Suddenly our vehicle didn't feel very big or safe. Our driver, Kassim, revved the engine and tooted the horn; as did the driver in front, and this seemed to work for a moment. The elephant smashed a small tree to show us he was for real, and then decided to charge us again - this time coming much closer, within a few metres. After more horn-blowing and revving he chilled out again, but this time we didn't hang around. The people in the other car must have been even more scared as they were in the back of a ute with their 2-year-old. Of course Kassim thought it was very funny that I had been afraid, and of course he was probably right.

My life could have really flashed before my eyes a few hours later when a drunk guy on a bicycle wheeled in front of the car from the darkness, forcing Kassim to do some crazy steering and braking to avoid hitting him and smashing into a ditch. Fortunately he was a much better driver than most of the blokes in charge of 'bush taxis', which are the main method of travelling long distances here.