Accra & Ghana Tourist Basics
See also :
Vaccinations and Visa info
See getting to Ghana Getting to Ghana
Hospitals and police
For list of clinics and local police phone numbers go to dedicated database and type " hospitals " " police " in the search text box. The police number to dial from a Ghana phone is 191 searchable MySQl database
Currency was re-valued from 2007 but now no old notes are, or should be, in circulation. The old currency was the Cedi with 100 Pesewas being equivalent to one Cedi. Exchange rates in 2007 of the old Cedi was about 17,000 Cedi to the pound.
The new currency is also the Cedi again with 100 new Pesewas making up One new Cedi, obviously this makes for the potential of confusion.
The definitive distinction is that new Cedi notes have a GH¢ character before the number on the notes (see photo). Currency rates are variable but one pound Sterling is equivalent to around 2.3 new Cedis as of September 2009.To make things more complicated a lot of Ghanaians still talk and quote figures in the old Cedis. To convert old Cedis to new Cedis divide old Cedis by 10,000. There are plenty of banks such as Barclays in Kumasi and Accra, for currency exchange if you need it. Also The ATMs work Ok with Visa such as Barclaycard, due to fraud its best to tell your bank your traveling to Ghana, and how long you are staying. Banks have security guards sitting outside next to the ATMs to help park cars, and watch out for you which i found very reassuring
Zain mobile dongle
For a list of internet cafe's go to the database and enter " internet cafe " in the search text box. For internet access any time you want it however from your hotel, or on route somewhere a mobile dongle is a better proposition.
Mobile dongles that connect to your laptop via a USB port are available from vodafone and Zain. I have a dual boot up on my lap top but almost exclusively use Ubuntu Linux 9.04. So I visited the main office of Vodafone near Kwame Nkrumah circle, and the Dansoman branch of Zain asking if could they tell me if their dongles worked with Linux ?
Zain were more helpful and I purchased a Huawei HSDPA model E220 dongle for 100 new cedis which is around 50 pounds. I installed this on windows but found that on Linux going to system, preferences, network connections , I found configuration easy. Also I found internet connection better with Linux, with windows, the connection cut off intermitently, the dongle gave a respectful reading of 7.2 megabits per sec, enough for browsing and uploading web pages.
Local buses as we know them in the U.K are virtually none existent , the replacement is the " tro tro " . You can board them at certain points along the road, and they are cheaper than a taxi. However watching them pull out in front of our taxi while we were doing about 40 mph didn't impress me much. Good for an Adrenalin high if you so wish.
Intercity travel by coach is not bad, the coaches being air conditioned and in good condition. They are provided by the State Transport Company (STC). The STC station in Accra is near the Kaneshie market. Coaches from Accra to Kumasi take around 4-5 hours. There are alternative coach systems but my wife states STC is better and safer
The usual way of getting about in Accra is by taxi, the cabs in Accra have a varying standard of presentation, function, and safety. You might perhaps want to avoid those cabs with rags stuffed in the hole where the petrol caps should be (Molotov cocktails on four wheels comes to mind)and paper thin floor. The cab drivers themselves however are a source of information, flexible and generally trustworthy.
Tried and trusted taxi List to date :
Emanuel & cab
kofi
You can hire a taxi driver all day for around 40 - 60 cedis. So you can plan to visit several tourist spots in one day and this works out quite economical. Also this means that if you want to spend a couple of hours in a restaurant or club the driver will wait outside. If this is at night when you come out its a safe option - you know the guy who's taxi your getting into. Obviously if this is at 11pm or later you will have to arrange and negotiate with the driver. A sensible and fair arrangement is to let the driver knock off for the day after lunch for rest and pick you back up late evening. My wife has used both drivers listed below on her own, while i was in the Uk and I got to know them both while in Ghana .
Emanuel based in Spintex Rd, Ecco Bank Junction. Mobile Telephone number , phoning from within Ghana, 0244815137. You can hire Emanuel for the whole day from around 10am till 6pm for around 60 new Cedis.
Kofi based Dansoman area, used to be a tro tro driver and knows every corner of Accra.Tel: 0277061842. English limited.
If you settle in a foreign country eventually your stomach will get used to conditions & settle down,but if your on holiday or a business trip for say 14 days you can do without a stomach upset or food poisoning. The editor used this regime & suffered no problems:
Don't drink the piped tap water, and don't even clean your teeth with it, buy large bottles of bottled water. For washing the piped water is OK. The bore hole water sold in plastic bags is Ok to drink if you boil it first. Bottled beers such as Gulder are all safe , & bottled minerals,but don't accept ice if drinking out at a bar
Avoid salads unless in your five star hotel
Foods cooked on charcoal such as Tilapia fish are Ok ,if taken straight off from the charcoal & you stand there to watch it cook , avoid cooked ones put to the side - you don't know how long they have been there.
I use a type of pro biotic every evening to help prevent upsets called Saccharomyces boulardi, you can buy over the counter in France or Belgium or get it over the internet. It doesn't have to be kept in the fridge like a like Adophilus, just out of extreme heat. It actually belongs to the yeast family, and very effective in recovering from or preventing diarrhoea. Perhaps slightly over the top I took bee propolis every morning too
Be careful with rice- It often contains Bacillus cereus spores, which are not killed by boiling but its Ok if you eat half an hour after cooking the rice ,but if rice hangs around for an hour or two the activated bacteria spores multiply quickly,this is when it can give you food poisoning. If offered already cooked rice how do you know how long ago it was cooked? get them to cook from dry grain in front of you.
Ghana uses a three pin plug system just like in the Uk and 230 Volts. Best to use surge protection adapters through.
If on a monthly contract with say Orange and you want to make sure you can get to your voice mail and receive calls in Ghana ok you need to:
Call Orange customer care & ask them to activate international roaming. Once this has been done its all up to you. You must set up a pin , not your normal pin but a voice mail retrieval pin. You can not do this in Ghana you must set this up in the u.K before you go. Dial 1 on your mobile phone to get to voice mail main menu, press 3 to get to answer phone features and settings ,follow instructions & enter say four number pin.
Once in Ghana you turn on your phone and find you can not dial out or receive calls, that's because your mobile is set to automatic & has probably locked to a useless service provider. Go to main settings,scroll down and click click on "phone", scroll down to "operator "selection & turn to"manual " your phone will either ask you to search click "yes"or it will search either way you will get a list of about four or five service providers. tiGO worked best in Accra, a 13 minute call to my father in the U.K cost me £16, the charges are automatically transferred to orange, and appear on your Orange monthly billing.
To retrieve your voice mail dial one as usual follow instructions it will ask you if you are retrieving your calls from abroad. You will be asked to enter your own mobile number on your key pad followed by the pin you set up in the U.K
Web sites worth visiting for general advice:
foreign and commonwealth office web site
national travel health network centre
World health organisation
scottish nhs public access web site