7-Hour GHANA STREET FOOD ROAD TRIP!! Driving to Mole National Park | Ghana

So I just asked her for some more black pepper, that black pepper sauce. Oh, man, it's so spicy Good morning, everyone. I hope you're all doing well. This is David Hoffman from David's been here coming at you at 6 a.m. In Kumasi, Ghana. Today, we are doing an 8-hour Super long drive to Mola National Park, the biggest wildlife refuge in the country. On the way, we're gonna stop a few times. Maybe see some palm oil, breakfast, lunch. Let's go Yeah, but it's going to be a beautiful drive anyway from the forest zone to the wooded savanna You're going to be amazed just the scenery along the roadside It's been I'd say like a decade since I've been an 8-hour drive. Usually, I try to max it at 4 hours but because of where we are in the country, the only way to get to Mola is to drive from here. If you are in Accra, you can fly it to Male. It's like a one-hour flight and then from there you drive and it's like two and a half hours, three hours? Two and a half. Okay, so let's say three hours. Always think longer because of traffic, right? And yeah, this is Kumasi at 6 a.m. And there's traffic After 45 minutes of traffic, we are out of Kumasi, sort of There's still villages coming up here and there But the like the hardest part to get out of all the traffic was in the main center So we had to cross from my Airbnb all the way through the center and then to the other side. We left like at 5.45, 5.50 and now it's 6.35. So probably 45 minutes, but we're out. Thank the Lord We're still gonna get a lot of traffic. You know, there's only you know, it's two lanes It's always like that. And one thing I gotta say though about Kumasi, a lot of dust A lot of dust man. It's like it's like it almost feels like desert. The contrast one hour outside of Kumasi is completely different I mean the the level of the temperature I mean it was like 84 degrees over there super hot at 6 in the morning and now it's like chilly It's like getting to the jungle, right? This is sort of how it is You know when you go to like national parks morning and night always cold during the day boiling scorching and now like jungle, village, a few different farms and that's basically it The moment we move from the forest zone to the wooded savanna area The palm trees are not going to be there anymore. But then they have the chenna trees. So chenna trees become their major Product for Processing into various products. So, butter, oil, cream There's a breakfast. So we're going to have a wachy Wachy. So right outside of my door is a lady with wachy So this is wachy Wachy is from rice and beans We have some chicken. We have the curry added And some grapes and then we have a tomato sauce On top you have the black pepper. So if you don't like the spice, you know, you can just remove the black one aside This is it my friends. The wachy. It's so good Love the rice Spring onions, the lettuce and you have this delicious like freaking yummy a little sweet a little spicy That sauce It's actually my favorite dish in the country. Big rice bowl. You got some chicken here as well Mm-hmm. Yummy The spice man. Delicious. I like it. It's like a arroz con frijoles basically Sticky rice This is what most of the spookies Right here It's more like a sticky rice, right? So it has textures like I wouldn't say paella or risotto, but it's more dry It's more like Central American rice and beans They cook the rice When the rice is almost done When the beans is almost done Then they add the rice So they cook best the beans So here in Ghana you eat a lot of rice and a lot of fuku which basically cassava. They also do a lot of corn dough Big mix right? Corn, cassava and rice And this rice is the local rice Or like it's freaking phenomenal. Ooh, now it's spicy, huh? You have a nice piece of chicken. You can get chicken or you can get fish. Man, kumasi was hot in comparison to this Fried chicken, lightly fried. Still very juicy. Mmm crispy. Oh wow, that fish is chicken though So I just asked her for some more black pepper, that black pepper sauce. Oh man, it's so spicy It's good. It's delicious. Hey, buddy It's more like a pasty black pepper sauce, right? Like pasty This is a huge rice bowl for breakfast and each bowl is like five, right? It's like one US dollar Yeah nice sounds 8 in the morning here, side of the road in the middle of Ghana. I don't even know where we are right now in the world A-B-O-4. Okay, I'm done. Mmm, so spicy So it's ten total. Two bucks for breakfast. Oh, I am full. I'm ready to go. Awesome. Let's go I'm actually really hot now. That black pepper, that's spicy, super spicy So now we are in East Bono region, a newly created region and Techima Where we are now is the original capital and this region is also known for their cashew production So it's like a big town this place. It's a big town. Yeah, so compared to the other villages I mean, this is big. You have low-rises, you have high-rises, you have lots of streets So many more vendors and obviously traffic and tuk-tuk galore. Tuk-tuks are everywhere. Whoa So it's different. I mean we haven't been to a village like this before because most of them have been like minuscule, right? After 15 minutes, we're out of that town. It wasn't so busy because it's not a market day, but you know bus station Mechanics, vendors, not that much to see there, right? If you pass through, probably stop for some food. If not, just continue It's one of the major cashew trading points in Techima. Cashew trading. So we should try some cashews, but I don't see anything on the street No, on the south shore. Yeah? On one of the farms to taste the fruits. Okay, yeah, I mean if we could try one, it would be great. The funny thing is it's not like India Like you don't see a million vendors on the street selling that one product It's harder to come by and what you see in front of us, like that haze That's a mix between pollution and the dust from the Sahara Desert So it's not straight pollution. It's not just a smog, right? Bush burning. So all these smogs mixed with the Sahara Desert dust It creates this environment Quick stop guys. We're gonna go see the cashew farm So these are all cashews, right? All these? Remember, it's a little different here in Ghana It's not like a cashew farm with a sign where people are like selling stuff and you can go in and visit No, this is just like on the side of the road. Just walk in and see it Yeah, it's nature, right? These are the fruits. This one they are ready to eat But here Initially, we're just eating the fruit But for some years now Cashew has become cash crops in Ghana's economy So people start having the farm. They don't mind if you pass through and eat the fruits Just make sure you drop the nuts under the tree so that the farmer can come and collect it Some of them, they even place baskets on the farm so you can drop the nuts inside. Just drop it right here and then Mmm. Oh, it's so good Mmm. It's almost like sweet and sour So here in Ghana, you're not gonna see people roasting cashews on the side of the road That's not how it works, right? You can just come here, pull off the crop, leave the cashew right there and then eat Again, super moist sour Mmm. Oh, it's delicious. Let's go Wow, I just ate like three of those fruits. So good. Cashew fruit Remember, please be respectful. Leave the cashew by the tree. Leave it somewhere they could see it The stretch of road that we're on now is completely rural Farmers, farmers, farmers. That is it I mean, we see a village here and there but easily 15 to 20 minutes in between villages So all it is is this and the temperatures dropped. It was 77 Fahrenheit this morning now almost 10 p.m It is like 87. Really hot. My arm out here and it's cooking. Now we are getting to the drier area It's becoming drier and drier. So more bushfire you are going to see along the roadside So more savanna, right? This is like entering the African savanna up here So we're going to make a brief stop at the yam market here in Kintampo So there's another big town Really big similar to the one we just passed a little while ago and yam market. Where is it? Over here? Right off the main street behind a wall, there's this little neighborhood and you have all these vendors. They're selling Spices, they're selling fish and here in the very back. We have the yam Wow, lots of yam man, root vegetable So this whole area is reserved for the yam Look how big this is huge I Love it. For me, yam, cassava all day. Are we buying some? Three for ten cities. For example, this one, they are a bit bigger, so it's twenty cities Not so bad. So like for this huge one, it's like four US dollars, but he got a few small ones Wow, so many. So this whole area is like this, right? All the yam are covered as you can see over here They're covered with like, I don't know if that's She wants me to come back. I need to show this. So here look, see all the yam, this is where they cover it, right? So they use bamboo to cover. So guys, sorry, that's not bamboo. That's high grass. It resembles bamboo Very similar, right? Let's go We have a very tight schedule because I have to get all the way to the National Park by 3 3.30 is the last game drive of the day. Obviously morning game drive, night game drive. Thank you, my friend. Thank you Take care. So this is the best place to buy, huh? This lady is too funny. She wanted me to come here and take photos of her. Tomatoes, peppers, small onions Thank you, very nice. Thank you. Bye, bye. I have to go. Let's go, let's go Really cool. It's funny because for these guys, this is normal. For me, it's like exotic Another quick stop. We're gonna get some roasted yam. So it's cashews, yam, tomatoes. That's what they do in this area Hey guys It's one CD per piece. One CD per piece? Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Bye, bye Bye guys, bye. Oh, the roasted plantains, that's the best. The only problem is we keep making stops like this. We're never gonna get there We're gonna fly. It's already 10.30 Let's go, man. Let's go. You bought bread too? For the baboons, right? No, I'm joking The way you know you're in the savannah is when you see the huge termite mounds left and right Hundreds of them. They told me we're gonna see a giant one right now. How big is it? Like five meters? I've seen a few of those in South Africa, Swaziland as well. Any national park you go to that's savannah like this, this type of Environment, you're gonna have that So what is the African savannah? Basically, it's an ecosystem of tropical grassland with warm temperatures year-round with the highest seasonal rainfall in the summer The savannah is characterized by grasses and small dispersed trees. They do not form closed canopies So basically what that means is that the sun makes it to the ground, right? Because in forests, the sun doesn't get through all the trees. Here, it does. So trees here and there, lots of grassland It's a good snack, right? Roasted yam. I would add some spice though So after crossing that bridge we entered a different region of the country, this is the savannah region savannah and It is dry. It is hot 95 degrees people are out and This is mostly more Muslim community, right? Because I see a lot of mosques. Obviously though what they're wearing is different, too Okay, so we just made a left you go this way, Tamale, you go left You got Mola National Park and we still have about 90 more minutes. It's a hundred degrees outside It's dry on the left and the right We have the Shea trees and we have to take this road to get back So the day we leave we're taking this road and we're gonna do all the way to Tamale So it's three hours from Mola from the entrance all the way to Tamale So again, if you want to come up here and you don't go this way You fly that from Accra to Tamale one hour and then drive three hours over here So there is a center at Usut where the women have been processing the Shea nut into butter or oil and cream This is Gonja village, it's like a hut village, right? It reminds me of I went to the country of Lesotho in sky capital Africa. This is how it is all like huts like that Just like mud huts with the grass on top, right? We made it here to one of the villages where the Shea butter is made or where it's extracted right from the nut Okay, okay the nuts from the Shea fruit so after eating the fruit not many are eating the nut inside is what they are looking for they just soak it and now the next process is that they are going to roast it after roasting they mill it after milling they come back again to roast it the powder or the cracked one that is what they are doing here so when they are done with this they are just going to add water and they will be stirring it and the fat or the oily part will come on top and they will be collecting it then after collecting that they are going to clean it the cleaning process also takes time you know like they put it in water take it out, put it in another water take it out until it becomes perfect so it's a long process to make Shea butter but in the end you have this incredible edible butter plus they use it for cosmetics right for their skin care it's cooled so if they leave it outside it will melt and become oil like cooking oil okay so here we have the final product, the Shea butter completely done right grab a little bit put it on when it's super dry outside oh it's very nice very nice oh man I feel good it's oily though it's oily so the one we have here, this is like rock solid take it outside, it just melts obviously you don't want to do that keep it in a solid state just like this oh this is nice man can we buy some here? can you buy it or they don't sell it? they're not selling it what? so remember here they only make the product they don't sell it they send it from here down to Accra so unfortunately we can't buy any I really wanted to buy some but I put enough on that I moisturized my entire skin for the day I'll see you in the car, we still have some time Damangu this is the last town? no not the last town but the original capital Savannah so we are still having about 26 kilometers to the park so we're going to stop for lunch? I'm excited for this lunch I'm trying Yolof for the first time Yolof right, so that's the rice so the difference is that this rice has been cooked in a stew and then it also has noodles some red sauce, some cabbage and some fried chicken he's having he's having Fufu with a light soup and this is like a local restaurant, open air, in the back is the kitchen, you see them making porridge, Fufu everything that's good a moist rice with noodles, get a little bit of this this is unique most of the places you go to request for Yolof rice you don't see noodles inside so this is a very unique way also of doing it so today I've eaten rice for breakfast with the Wache, now rice lunch oh but it's good mmm, marker flavor this one is cabbage nice tang not so much, so it's like a spicy tomato paste and here fried chicken oh yeah I love fried chicken in this country it's never like crazy fried mmm, it's so good pretty good food and what does it cost probably like 5 right? it's always around 1 dollar 1 or 2 US dollars max I'm going to start having a snail snail is a delicacy, I spent 6 dollars on a snail the other day and that's it my friends, that is lunch I'm going to enjoy the rest of it and I'll see you in 2 minutes in the car alright my friends, this journey is almost over 30 minutes to go and we're in Mola National Park we are about to enter Mola National Park the biggest wildlife game reserve in Ghana it's a must visit if you want to see wildlife in this beautiful country and yeah guys 8 hour drive from Kumasi all the way up here, it was a long stretch we ate some wache I ate some jollof we saw shia butter shia butter, we saw the biggest yam market in Kintampo oh woah, look at this oh my gosh and here in Mola National Park, there's only 2 accommodation options, the Mola Motel and the Zaina Lodge a luxurious safari lodge one of the first ones in West Africa that's where I'm staying, they have a pool and they have lots of game drives so game drive in the morning, game drive at night I'm spending the next 36 hours there so I'm going on 3 game drives I'm excited guys, I can't wait to see some elephants what else, some hyenas but beware of the baboons ok, so don't leave your food out the baboons take everything well guys I hope you loved this video, if you did give me a thumbs up leave me a comment below, subscribe to my channel for more awesome travel content I'll see you in the next Travel Food Adventure in Mola National Park let's go