Getting to Ghana was actually much more difficult than it should be.

I was heading there for a badminton tournament and needed a tourist visa, which on its own sounds like no big deal.

I was in Dubai at the time, so I called the Ghana embassy and asked for an appointment. When I told them I’m on a New Zealand passport, they said it needs to be done at the embassy in New Zealand.

“So you’re saying I have to fly 17 hours to New Zealand, get the visa and fly 17 hours back?”

“Yes.”

“Can I send my passport to New Zealand and have them send it back?”

“No.”

“I have to be there in person?”

“Yes.”

“For a one week tourist visa?”

“Yes.”

Sounded kinda silly for 2026. So what did I do? I do what every man does when he doesn’t know what to do.

I called Mama!

I told her to call the embassy in New Zealand, explain that I’m a travelling athlete and if it was possible for me to DHL the passport to her, get the visa, and then she can DHL back to me.

The good folks at the Ghana Embassy in New Zealand said that would be fine, but to guarantee it in a week I needed to get the express visa for a few hundred dollars extra. But after spending a few hundred on DHL fees, what’s a few hundred more?

After a couple of weeks, I had my passport back in Dubai with my shiny new Ghana visa.

First impressions after touching down?

Ghana drivers are crazy! I’ve travelled much of Africa, and road rules aren’t really followed anywhere, but in Accra they literally drive as if they’re playing Need For Speed. On the way from the airport to my Airbnb, I figured I just got a wild driver, but it turned out all my Uber drivers the entire week were like that.

My apartment was in the Osu area, and at least according to ChatGPT, it was supposed to be one of the upmarket areas where the expats stay.

Note: If you’re heading to Accra, I stayed at this apartment which was perfect for my needs, but the area was so-so.

Next time I go to Accra I will likely stay somewhere around Accra Mall which I think is much better for a short stay, somewhere like this apartment.

There are also many other affordable options all over Accra on Booking if you have a different area in mind.

On the morning I arrived, I put on my walking shoes and went for my first scouting mission of the neighbourhood. Sorry to report that I was quite underwhelmed with this “nice expat area”, it was rougher than I expected. However, it did feel safe to walk and nobody gave me any strange stares, so I guess foreigners are a common sight around there, even though I felt like I was the only one at the time.

I walked about an hour and the place I decided on for my first meal was going to be at a smoothie spot called Nourish Labs. They have a mixture of tuna, salad and apple that they called “pocholala” and the waitress convinced me it was delicious so I tried it…and it was!

Then it was time to check out the beach. The reason I had picked this particular Airbnb was because it was just a few minutes walk from the ocean, at least that’s what Google Maps told me. Just turn left, walk straight and you’ll be at Osu Beach in no time!

Reality turned out to be a little different – as I walked the three or four blocks towards the water, things started getting rougher and rougher until I found myself in an area I really didn’t feel like I was supposed to be in. Nothing new in Africa – that happens in almost every country I’ve been to, but the road Google Maps was telling me to get to the beach looked to be some kind of private/village/alley type of road?

I decided, probably I shouldn’t go wandering down there on my first day in Ghana so decided to go back home and ask my security guard a few questions before coming back.

The next day I headed for the badminton stadium. I was here for the Ghana International which was hosted at Borteyman Stadium – an impressive complex built for the African Games in 2024.

It feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere because there seems to be nothing else around it, and a lot of Uber drivers seemed to not where it was exactly. But inside the facilities were good and better than most tournaments I’ve played in Africa. This is where I spent most of my week!

Funny story from the following morning. I woke up and wanted some fruit so went looking for mangoes. There’s a small street stall just on the corner of my apartment, so I went looking at her small table of fruit and only found oranges, papayas, watermelons, avocados, but no mangoes. I asked if she had mangoes.

“Oh that’s my sister’s stall, let me call her.”

Then she screams at the top of her lungs for her sister to come out, and keeps screaming eight or nine times for at least a few minutes until her sister finally appears.

“Do you have mangoes?” I ask.

“Mangoes are here!” she says, and under the papayas there are indeed a couple of mangoes.

I grab one.

“How much?”

“Eighty” she says in her friendly big mama voice.

Now, eighty Ghanaian cedi is equal to about $7, but since it’s my second day in Ghana (and first day shopping) I don’t actually know this and haven’t bothered to check. I have a pocket full of 100 cedi bills, and I don’t always carry my phone when I go walking, so I can’t check. So the price is eighty, no problem.

So I take the mango, then I ask, “How much are the oranges?”

“Oranges are four.”

So I take five oranges and I say to her, “So five oranges are 20, and the mango is 80, so that should be 100, right?” and I hand her a 100 cedi bill.

And she looks at me with a bemused face, and then looks at the money, and looks at me again, even more bemused, and finally says, “Okay!” and gives me a huge smile, and I walk off thinking, that was weird, did I calculate wrong or something? Why was she so confused?

It’s not until that night when I go to order some groceries online, and I see the price of oranges are indeed around 5 cedi, but the price of mangoes are about 10 cedi.

And I realise, when I asked the price of mangoes, she wasn’t saying “eighty” she was saying “eight”. Just with the Ghanaian accent, the T on the end is hard so it sounded like eighty. So there I was giving her eighty cedi when she only asked for eight cedi, and of course she accepted it with glee once she figured out what was happening, and I’m here laughing in my apartment that I ripped myself off, but also happy that an extra $7 probably made someone’s day.

During the days I was competing, I tried to not be too adventurous with food, so I was mostly ordering Chinese and Korean, or cooking my own. Surprisingly the Korean food there was really good. I think I ordered from the same place three times at least.

Next thing I had to do was try some Ghanaian food! On my free day I went looking for a popular cafe not far from my apartment, apparently some of the best local food in the area.

When I arrived looking like the typical lost tourist a waitress pointed me to a table and told me the menu.

I told her to just bring me the most popular thing because it’s my first time eating Ghanaian food. She said she’ll bring me okra lamb and banku – I said fine!

The banku is a type of pounded cassava, and the okra and lamb is like a traditional stew. I told her I didn’t want anything spicy, but she said in Ghana that’s not possible.

I didn’t expect it to be that spicy, I think I needed two bottles of water to finish it and a twenty serviettes to wipe away my sweat, but I finished it. Pretty good!

On my final day, I decided I couldn’t leave Accra without seeing the beach – it’s the whole reason I tried to stay near the beach after all. I grabbed an Uber and took a ride down to one of the resorts near Labidi Beach to have dinner.

This time I tried more Ghanaian food – lentils with yam fries and fried bananas.

This was too oily for me and stopped being enjoyable after the first five bites or so, would be good as a daytime snack though.

As for the beach – well, it wasn’t much to look at to be honest, certainly not somewhere I would want to swim. But having some food on a warm night overlooking the ocean – a great way to end my trip to Accra nonetheless.

Final thoughts on Accra?

I had expected Ghana to be much more developed than it was – I’m not sure why but there’s a perception that the west of Africa is much more modern than the east. In my experience this hasn’t been so true. It was also much sleepier and less busy than I expected.

My longest conversations about the country were with the Uber drivers during my 40 minute drive to the stadium each day, and we talked about all the usual things – politics, work, women, travel. My impression was it’s slow, but also stable and reasonably safe by Africa standards. Definitely much more pleasant than somewhere like Cameroon, though I think their neighbour Cote d’Ivoire was a step ahead in most things.

Should you visit? Absolutely! It seems like the type of place where the longer you stay, the more you’ll find and fall in love with the place. Bonus if you like spicy food!