Ghana starts in Accra and gets greener every hour you drive.
What the canopy walk actually costs, which day out of the capital earns the early start, and where the cocoa is really grown.
Accrafrom $25
Kakum canopyfrom $110
Boti Fallsfrom $94 The four days a first week in Ghana is built around.
How long each one takes, what it costs, and which morning to give it.
01The first dayExperience the Beauty, History and the Culture Of Accra in a DayThe capital on foot and by car, from the Makola stalls to the Nkrumah mausoleum. Do it before you go anywhere else and the rest of the country makes more sense.
02The hills dayBoti Falls, Umbrella Rock, Aburi Gardens & Cocoa Farm TourBoti Falls, Umbrella Rock, the Aburi gardens and a cocoa farm in one long loop north east. The best value day on the whole site.
03The Ashanti dayBonwire Namimg Ceremony and Kente Tourist CenterA naming ceremony at Bonwire, where the kente is woven on narrow looms and named before it is worn.
04The kitchen dayLocal Ghanaian Cooking Class in Accra to help support wellness community centerGroundnut soup, red red and a fufu pounded properly. Ghanaian food is worth learning rather than only ordering.
Every good Ghanaian day starts by leaving Accra early.
One long loop takes the falls, the gardens and a cocoa farm in a single day. Or pick a single direction and go deeper. What each costs to board, and how long you are gone for.
Cape Coast and Elmina stand three hours west of the capital.
The forts on this stretch of coast were built for the gold trade and then used for the trade in people. Most visits run as one long day from Accra, often stopping at the slave river at Assin Manso on the way. Guides here are local and the visit is not a light one. Give it the whole day, and plan to travel back in the evening rather than fit anything after it.
Six more directions, once the obvious ones are booked.
Gardens on a cool ridge an hour above the city, zebra and antelope on the Accra plain, the Ashanti capital and its weaving villages, mona monkeys a village has protected for generations, the widest water in the country, and the long haul north to the mud mosques.
Accra rewards a guide, a market and an early start.
Everything in Accra →
Jamestown and its lighthouse, the Makola stalls, the Nkrumah mausoleum and the arch on Independence Square. The city is flat, hot and much easier with somebody who knows which lane to turn down.
- 1Know Ghana in 4 hrs – Accra City Tourfrom $100
- 2Escape Accra City to Aburi Gardens and Tetteh Quarshie Cocoa Farmsfrom $170
- 3Accra City Tourfrom $150
The city in half a day
Independence Square and the Black Star Gate, the Nkrumah mausoleum, the arts centre and a run through Jamestown. Enough to get the shape of the place before you start choosing neighbourhoods.
Makola, before the heat
The largest market in the city and the loudest. Cloth on one side, smoked fish and spices on the other, and somebody with you who can stop you paying the first price you hear.
Drums, beads and a narrow loom
Bottle glass melted into beads at Krobo, adinkra stamped with calabash dye, or an afternoon behind a drum. Most of them send you home with the thing you made.
What a day out in Ghana actually costs.
Ghanaian days grouped by what they cost. The gap between a market morning and a private car for the day is wider here than almost anywhere.
Market mornings, city walks, a cooking class and the short run up to Aburi.
The full days: the canopy walk, the falls loop, the Shai Hills plain, Kumasi and its looms.
Private cars with a driver, the long drive north to Mole, and the multi day routes across the country.
- 1The Cape Coast Day Tourfrom $155
- 2The Cape Coast Tourfrom $170
- 3Accra To Cape Coast And Elmina Day Tourfrom $165
Kente, cocoa and a Ghanaian name.
Rainforest and waterfalls exist all across West Africa. A cloth woven in strips and named before it is worn, a pod that becomes chocolate, and a morning where a stranger gives you a Ghanaian name do not.
Kente, woven in strips
Kente is not cut from a bolt. It is woven on narrow looms in strips about four inches across, then sewn edge to edge into a cloth, and the blocks of colour are deliberately set so they do not line up between neighbouring strips. Every pattern carries a name and a meaning, and the weavers at Bonwire, an hour out of Kumasi, will tell you which ones a chief may wear and which ones you may not.
- 1Bonwire Namimg Ceremony and Kente Tourist Center★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 40 reviews
- 2Tour Kumasi City Like a Local★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 34 reviews
- 3Traditional naming ceremony For African Diasporas in Kumasi★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 10 reviews
Where the chocolate starts
Ghana grows some of the best cocoa in the world and eats very little of it. The pods hang straight off the trunk, yellow and heavy, and the wet beans inside taste of citrus rather than chocolate. What makes them chocolate is a week of fermentation under banana leaves and then days spread out drying on mats at the roadside, which is why you smell the harvest before you see it.
- 1Boti Falls, Umbrella Rock, Aburi Gardens & Cocoa Farm Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 72 reviews
- 2Experience Boti Waterfalls, Aburi Botanical Gardens & Tetteh Quarshie Cocoa Farm★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 38 reviews
- 3Escape Accra City to Aburi Gardens and Tetteh Quarshie Cocoa Farms★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 32 reviews
Being given a Ghanaian name
Ghanaian names carry the day of the week you were born, which is why so many men here are Kwame or Kofi. Visitors, particularly those tracing family back across the Atlantic, are given a name in a short ceremony with an elder, water and schnapps, and the day is chosen from your own birth date rather than picked for you. It is arranged in advance with a family, not booked on the morning.
- 1The Ancestral Naming Ceremony and Home Coming Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 30 reviews
- 2Naming Ceremony and Heritage Homecoming Experience for Diasporas★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 15 reviews
- 3Traditional Naming Ceremony and Boat Cruise Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 15 reviews
Four Ghanaian bookings that will not wait until the morning.
Book almost anything here the evening before and it will still run. These four will not, because they run on harvests, opening times, a long drive or somebody else’s family calendar.
- 01The Ancestral Naming Ceremony and Home Coming ExperienceThe ceremony is arranged with a family and an elder rather than sold off a shelf, so it is set up days ahead rather than on the morning.
- 022-Day Private Tour to the Mount Afadjato and Wli WaterfallsWli and Afadjato sit in the far east, hard against the Togo border. Too far to decide on the morning: most of what goes out there runs as a two or three day trip rather than a day out.
- 03Boti Falls, Umbrella Rock, Aburi Gardens & Cocoa Farm TourCocoa is picked in two windows a year. Outside them the trees are bare and a farm visit shows you the drying mats rather than the pods.
- 044 Days Safari to Mole park and Wechiau HipposMole sits a long way north of the capital. The trips that go run as fixed multi day departures rather than on demand.
From December the Sahara sends its dust south across Ghana.
The Harmattan blows dry off the desert between December and February. Mornings turn hazy, the horizon goes flat and grey, and long views over the forest simply are not there. It is also the coolest, driest stretch of the year. Plan for the near view rather than the far one: a workshop, a kitchen, a market, a loom.
By place, from the capital outward
By kind of day, forest, city, kitchen or road
Accra, the coast, the rainforest, then north to Kumasi.
Cape Coast and ElminaJust reviewed, from Accra to the north.
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