Sun 12th Oct 2008
- Mole National Park Travel Guide & City Information
Mole is Ghana's most popular destination for seeing large wild animals. Elephants abound. (When we went there, there was one guarding the front gate. Elephants are huge, when they're standing in front of you in the road, but luckily, we found out it was the elephant called People's Friend -- a friendly one indeed.)
Other animals at the park include warthogs, baboons (which are quite populous, and unfriendly), crocodiles and a variety of gazelle-like animals.
You can only wander around the park with a park guide, who carries a gun. (This is really all for the best. Again: Elephants are big and scary.) Please do say hi to your guide. Ghanaians are very friendly, and if you inquire a bit about your guide's life, you'll warm up to him much better.
The museum at the park is really not much. (It's sign says it's "A place to visit." Not a great place to visit or a cool place to visit or even an educational place to visit. Just a place.) The highlight there is a fetal elephant kept in a cooler filled with formadehyde. Really.
Although there is a hotel at the park (with a somewhat nasty pool) and a restaurant that serves pretty passable Euro-American-style food, I'd skip it (since it's pretty expensive and the electricity goes off at night anyway) and stay in the village of Larabanga, which is just a few kilometers up the road and accessible by bicycle.