Koforidua and the Eastern Region

Where the Eastern Region actually sits

The Eastern Region begins where the coastal plain behind Accra stops being flat, roughly forty kilometres out of the city, and it runs north and east from there to the shore of Lake Volta. Koforidua, its capital, is about 85 kilometres from Accra and sits in a bowl of hills at a few hundred metres, which is enough elevation to make the nights noticeably cooler than anything on the coast.

Three things define the region geographically. The Akuapem–Togo ranges run diagonally across it as a long forested ridge, and the road up that ridge from Nsawam and Ayi Mensah is the gateway most people use. Cocoa country fills the middle, which is why the region has a different economy and a different kind of small town from the fishing villages of the coast. And the Volta dam at Akosombo closes the eastern edge, where the river is squeezed through a gorge before it widens into the lake.

That mix is the reason the Eastern Region gets skipped. It has no castles and no famous beach, so it does not appear on the Accra–Cape Coast–Kumasi line that most first itineraries follow. What it has instead is waterfalls, hills, the country's bead trade, botanical gardens, and the sort of drive where you keep wanting to stop.

Koforidua itself, and what to expect of it

Koforidua is a working regional capital of perhaps a couple of hundred thousand people, not a tourist town, and it has one genuine attraction — the Thursday bead market — plus a comfortable base for everything around it. People call it Koftown, and the name tells you something about the scale of the place.

The centre is compact. There is a central market that operates every day, a stretch of banks and mobile money kiosks along the main road, a lorry park where the shared taxis and tro-tros for Somanya, Nkawkaw and Accra queue up, and a handful of hotels ranging from basic guesthouses to mid-range places with generators and air conditioning. Nothing is more than a few minutes from anything else.

Stay here rather than in Accra if you are doing the falls. Leaving Koforidua at seven in the morning puts you at Boti before the coaches; leaving Accra at seven puts you in the Nsawam queue.

Koforidua is not a destination in itself. It is the door to everything within an hour of it.

The Thursday bead market

The Koforidua bead market runs every Thursday on the grounds near the town's sports stadium, and it is the largest bead market in Ghana — traders bring strands in from the Krobo bead-making towns around Odumase, Somanya and Agomanya, and buyers come up from Accra and down from Kumasi for it.

The rhythm matters. Sellers start laying out before dawn, the serious wholesale buying happens early, and by the middle of the day the good stock has thinned and the heat has set in. Arrive by eight if you can. Tables are laid with strands hung on wooden frames or spread on cloth, sorted loosely by type rather than by price, and the whole ground smells faintly of dust and the powdered glass used in the kilns.

Bargaining is expected and it is not aggressive. Ask the price, offer something lower, settle somewhere between, and buy the whole strand rather than picking individual beads, which annoys sellers and costs more. Bring small cedi notes, because change for a large note at eight in the morning is a genuine problem and mobile money is not universal on the stalls.

Two honest warnings. The market is crowded and the ground is uneven, so it is hard work with a pushchair or a walking stick. And a proportion of what is sold is imported glass rather than Krobo-made recycled glass, which is not a scandal — it is a market, not a museum — but it does mean you should know what you are looking at before you spend real money. Our guide to shopping in Ghanaian markets covers the etiquette in more detail.

Understanding what you are buying

Krobo beads are made from recycled glass — bottles and window glass crushed to powder, packed into clay moulds with a cassava stalk through the centre to make the hole, and fired in a wood-fired kiln until the powder fuses. That process is the reason the beads have a slightly matte, slightly irregular surface rather than the glassy shine of moulded imports.

The names are worth learning because they change how you shop. Bodom are the large, heavy powder-glass beads, traditionally chief's beads, often yellow or green with painted patterns. Chevrons and other trade beads are older imported Venetian glass that came into West Africa through the coastal trade, and genuine antique ones are expensive and much faked. Painted powder-glass beads carry hand-applied designs fired on in a second firing. Translucent beads made from crushed bottle glass have a soft, cloudy colour that cannot really be imitated.

If you want to see the making rather than the selling, the bead workshops around Odumase Krobo and Cedi's workshop area near Somanya take visitors, and watching glass being pounded and moulded takes the mystery out of the market stall immediately. It is about forty minutes from Koforidua on the road towards Akosombo.

Beads are also the one Ghanaian souvenir that travels perfectly. They are small, they do not break, and they mean something to the people who made them. Ask the seller what a pattern is for — waist beads, a naming ceremony, a funeral, a puberty rite — and you will usually get a proper answer.

Boti Falls and the steps down

Boti Falls is a twin waterfall on the Ponpon river near Huhunya, about thirty kilometres north-east of Koforidua, and it is reached by a long concrete staircase down into a forested gorge. The two falls are locally described as male and female, and in the wet season they merge into one sheet of water at the base.

The staircase is the thing nobody warns you about. It is several hundred steps down, and every one of them has to be climbed again on the way out, in humidity, usually in the middle of the day because that is when people arrive. Take water. If your knees are bad, this is a site to think carefully about rather than to attempt and regret at step two hundred.

At the bottom there is a pool, spray, and a rock platform where everyone takes photographs. Swimming is generally not permitted at the plunge pool and the rocks are slick, so mind your footing. The volume of water changes completely between seasons: in the dry months from January the falls can be a thin curtain, while in June or September they are loud enough to make conversation difficult.

The site is managed with a staffed entrance, guides available at the top, and a small rest area. Entry and guiding charges are set locally and reviewed periodically, so confirm the current figure at the gate or with the Eastern Regional office of the Ghana Tourism Authority rather than trusting a number from a blog. We cover the walk, the timings and the rock formations in more depth in our guide to Boti Falls and Umbrella Rock.

Umbrella Rock and the walk beyond the falls

Umbrella Rock is a mushroom-shaped sandstone formation about half an hour's walk from Boti Falls through farmland and secondary forest, and the walk to it is the better half of the day out. A wide flat slab balances on a narrower column, and you can climb onto the top of it, where the view opens out over the Krobo hills.

The path is not difficult but it is not a boardwalk either: red earth, exposed roots, a couple of steep pinches, and full sun in the open stretches. Wear something with grip rather than sandals. Guides from the Boti site lead the walk and knowing the turns matters, because the route crosses other farm paths and is not signposted the whole way.

On the same circuit is the three-headed palm tree, a single palm that has split into three trunks — a curiosity rather than a spectacle, but it is on the way. Local guides tell the stories attached to all three sites, and the stories are most of what you are paying for.

Akaa Falls and the region's quieter water

Akaa Falls, roughly twenty minutes from Boti near the village of Akaa, is a narrower fall dropping into a rock basin, and it is far quieter than Boti because the access is rougher and most visitors do not bother. The descent is a steep path with rock steps rather than a built staircase.

Go if you want the water to yourself and you are steady on your feet. The pool at the bottom sits in a cleft with high walls, the noise reflects, and on a weekday you may well be the only people there. The final approach road is unpaved and rutted, which is fine in a saloon car in the dry season and unwise after heavy rain.

The Eastern Region has more water than most people realise. Tsenku Falls sits behind Dodowa in the hills above the Shai plains, reached by a walk along a stream bed that involves wet feet. Begoro has a set of falls in the hills north of Koforidua that see very few visitors. Asenema, below the Akuapem ridge near Aburi, is a short but pretty drop that often gets folded into an Aburi day. None of these are Wli in the Volta Region for sheer scale, and our overview of Ghana's waterfalls sets out how they compare.

The trade-off across all of them is season. The falls are at their most impressive between June and October, which is also when the paths are worst and the leeches and mosquitoes are at their most enthusiastic. In February you get easy walking and thin water.

The Akuapem ridge and Aburi

The Akuapem ridge is the long forested escarpment that separates Accra from the Eastern Region interior, and Aburi sits on top of it about forty minutes from the city — close enough that it is the region's most-visited spot by a wide margin. The temperature drops several degrees as you climb, which on a March afternoon is reason enough to go.

The road up from Ayi Mensah is a series of tight bends with heavy truck traffic crawling in low gear, and it is slow. Coming down in the evening you meet the same trucks plus everyone returning to Accra. Plan around that rather than being surprised by it.

Aburi Botanical Gardens occupies a colonial-era plantation site with avenues of old trees, wide lawns and a slow feel that is unlike anywhere in Accra. Families picnic; couples take wedding photographs; school groups run about. Alongside the gardens runs a long strip of woodcarving workshops selling stools, masks and furniture, where you can watch pieces being cut and sanded. Our guide to Aburi Gardens and the Akuapem ridge covers the gardens, the carvers and the timing in detail.

Akosombo, the dam and the lake edge

Akosombo is where the Eastern Region meets Lake Volta, about an hour and a half east of Koforidua, and it is the other half of a proper regional loop. The dam holds back the Volta to form one of the world's largest man-made lakes, and the river below the wall runs green and fast through a steep gorge.

The dam itself is a controlled facility. Viewpoint access and any tours are managed by the Volta River Authority and arrangements change, so confirm directly with them rather than turning up expecting entry. The view from the road above the gorge is free and good regardless.

What most visitors actually do here is get on the water. Boats run from the Akosombo landing for short cruises upstream, and a larger vessel operates on some weekends; the Volta Hotel sits high above the gorge with the best view in the area. Downstream at Sogakope and Ada the river widens and slows, and that stretch is where the riverside lodges and the estuary trips are.

One honest point about Akosombo: it is more interesting as a piece of engineering and landscape than as a set of attractions. If you are expecting a developed lakeside resort strip you will be disappointed. If you want a boat, a gorge and a long view, it delivers.

Roads, driving and getting around

The Eastern Region is straightforward to drive and awkward to do by public transport, which is the single biggest practical fact about visiting it. The main routes are surfaced, distances are short, and the difficulty is entirely about traffic and the last few kilometres to the sites.

From Accra there are two usual ways in. The N6 through Nsawam and up to Suhum is the fast road, and you turn east to Koforidua from there. The alternative is the ridge road up through Ayi Mensah and Aburi, then on through Mampong and Akropong to Koforidua — slower, prettier, and sensible only if Aburi is part of the plan. Leaving Accra between six and seven in the morning is worth an hour of your life; leaving at nine means the Nsawam stretch.

Tro-tros and shared taxis connect Accra, Koforidua, Somanya, Nkawkaw and Akosombo frequently and cheaply, and they are fine for getting between towns. Getting from a town to a waterfall is the problem — the last stretch to Boti or Akaa is not served by anything regular, and you end up negotiating with a taxi driver to wait for you, which works but costs more than people expect and leaves you tied to his patience.

A hired vehicle with a driver solves the whole thing, particularly if you want Aburi, the falls and Akosombo in one loop. If you are driving yourself, note that unpaved approach roads and speed bumps in every village are the two things that punish a low saloon car. Our guide to driving in Ghana covers licences, police checkpoints and road conditions.

Seasons, weather and what to carry

The practical window for the Eastern Region is the dry season from roughly December to March, when the paths are firm and the drives are predictable, though the waterfalls are at their weakest then. There is a genuine trade-off between good walking and good water, and it is worth deciding which you care about before choosing dates.

The main rains fall from around April to July, with a shorter wet spell in September and October. In those months Boti and Akaa are loud and full, the forest is intensely green, and the clay paths turn into something you slide down rather than walk. Rain here tends to come in short violent bursts rather than all-day drizzle, so a morning start often gets the walking done before the sky turns.

Harmattan from around December to February brings haze and dry air up here as it does everywhere, and the hills get cold at night by Ghanaian standards. A long-sleeved layer in Koforidua in January is not excessive. Our article on the best time to visit Ghana breaks the seasons down region by region.

What to carry for a day of falls and hills:

• Shoes with grip — trainers or light walking shoes, not sandals
• At least a litre and a half of water per person, bought before you leave town
• Small cedi notes for entrance, guiding and roadside food
• Insect repellent for the forest floor at Boti and the streambed at Tsenku
• A dry bag or plastic bag for a phone, because the spray at the base of Boti is heavier than it looks
• A change of shirt, which you will want after the climb back up

Fitting the Eastern Region into a real itinerary

Give the Eastern Region two days and a night, and build it as a loop rather than as two separate day trips from Accra. The single most common mistake is trying to do Aburi, Boti and Akosombo in one day from the city, which means six hours of driving for about three hours of actual sightseeing.

The loop that works is this. Leave Accra early and climb the ridge to Aburi for the gardens and the carvers in the cool of the morning. Continue along the ridge to Koforidua, arriving in time for lunch, and spend the afternoon in town or at the bead workshops towards Somanya. Sleep in Koforidua. The next morning go out to Boti early, walk to Umbrella Rock, take in Akaa on the way back, then run east to Akosombo in the afternoon and return to Accra along the Tema motorway in the evening. If you can time the first day for a Thursday, the bead market slots in before Aburi or instead of it.

A three-day version adds Begoro or Tsenku, a night at the lake, and time to do the Akosombo boat properly. Anything shorter than two days is a choice to see one thing well, and if you only have one day, the honest answer is to pick Aburi or pick Boti, not both.

How we arrange an Eastern Region trip

Ghana Travel & Tour runs the Eastern Region as a private day trip or an overnight loop, with an air-conditioned vehicle and a licensed guide, leaving either from our Kasoa base or from your hotel in Accra. That usually means an early start to beat the Nsawam traffic, the Boti and Umbrella Rock walk with a local guide at the site, and a Thursday timed for the bead market if your dates allow.

You can see the routes on our tours page. Quotes are itemised so you can see the vehicle, the guiding and the entry charges separately, and they come from one named trip manager you deal with directly.

Questions people ask