Accra Overview

The impression your going to get of Accra in Ghana depends on your travel itinerary, your expectations and the experience you have had from visiting other countries.

If you have booked a package deal, say flying Gatwick to Accra international airport and are picked up from the airport straight to a 4 or 5 star beach side hotel, your going to experience nothing but relative luxury.

Waiters at the bar or restaurant are going to cater for all your whims ; your unlikely to get much contact with locals since they are probably going to try and sell you something ,an the hotel is going to take the tact that this might bother their customers.

Most of the beaches in Accra are generally all in good condition , so the general experience is going to be a neat environment, clean and relaxing and a generally enjoyable experience ; if you venture into Accra city however itself the experience is a little bit different. An example of a beach in poor condition though with filth on the access path to it is Dansoman beach.

I spent quite a considerable time in Accra covering most areas, and had trouble recognising one area from another since it all looks pretty much the same, mainly single to two story buildings , with streets that have open sewer gullies, most roads have kiosks and small freight containers along the roadside which can give an impression of visual chaos.

Many areas don't seem to have any planning at all , a lot of the roads especially the side roads are totally appalling and are not even flat never mind not having any tarmac. When you get a taxi and find the main roads are blocked ,so you tell the taxi driver to use the side roads, then it starts raining its bit of an experience. I don't know how a 4 by 4 can get down some of the roads which have no tarmac but just mud ,never mind none 4 by 4 .

Traffic is very bad in Accra , with the time taken for road construction unbelievable. About 5 years ago I travelled from Accra to Kumasi by coach & was amused when I felt a bump , looked out f the window & noticed that the tarmac ran out & we were on hard core; its quite depressing doing the same Journey in 2011 to see that large sections are still just hardcore.

To give you an idea have a look a this photograph ,its not out in the County but just around the corner from the coach station in Accra, you can see the buildings in the background, not a designated market area to my knowledge just someone has decide they are going to keep their livestock. No ordered pens or anything & the tyres just as feed holders don't add to the attraction in my opinion.

street in Accra

I was told by my Ghanian wife not to compare Accra against the neat clean, & ordered roads of Europe & accept that Ghana is still a third world country.

There are plenty of shops in Accra but the bulk of them are quite small , although a few super markets and complexes and springing up such as the shopping mall at Teteh Quarshie see ...

Some areas of Accra are neat though like the airport residential but as a pedestrian your quite alienated in other words you wouldn’t really be in the area unless on your way to the hotel ;so there are no foot paths going anywhere ,and noting to look at by foot.

Youcan get about relativity easily in Accra, there are no local public transport buses but plenty of taxis and Tro Tros , and coaches to use see

There are plenty of hotels in Accra obviously apart from along the coast most are in the airport residential area. An average price per night for the airport area is $99

There are essentially no areas that you can not venture into , although some areas at night are a bit more pugilistic than others , nima & James Town are a couple of areas that fir into this category.