The natural wonders of Ghana

An unusual spread of natural wonders

For a country you can drive across in a couple of days, Ghana packs in a surprising range of natural wonders: a crater lake made by a meteorite, a village floating on stilts, wild elephants in savannah, and a rainforest you walk above rather than through. They sit far apart, in the Ashanti heartland, the far south-west, the north and the central coast, which is precisely why planning matters.

The variety is the point. In one trip you can swim in a lake that fills a meteorite crater, paddle to a village that has never known a road, and stand on the ground near a wild elephant, each on a different day and in a different landscape.

As a Kasoa-based team who run these routes, we treat these wonders as the anchors of a trip and build the driving around them. Two weeks lets you link most of them without rushing. Read this with our guides to Mole safari and the Kakum canopy walk.

Lake Bosomtwe: a meteorite crater lake

About half an hour south-east of Kumasi lies Lake Bosomtwe, the only natural lake of any size in Ghana, filling a crater blasted out by a meteorite roughly a million years ago. The result is a near-perfect circle of green water ringed by forested hills, calm and still, with small villages such as Abono along the shore.

It is sacred to the Ashanti, who traditionally hold that the souls of the dead come here to bid farewell to their god, Twi. Out of respect for that belief, fishing has historically been done from flat wooden planks called padua rather than proper canoes, and you may still see fishermen paddling these by hand across the water.

It is a peaceful, swimmable spot for a night's stop, with a handful of simple lakeside lodges, and it pairs naturally with the culture and craft villages of Kumasi, the kente weavers of Bonwire and the brass and adinkra workshops nearby. Our Kumasi and Ashanti guide covers the region.

Nzulezo: a village on stilts

In the far south-west, near Beyin, Nzulezo is a whole village built on stilts over Lake Tadane, its wooden walkways, homes, school and church all standing above the water. You reach it only by dugout canoe, an hour or so of paddling through a channel of swamp forest so quiet you hear the paddle dip and the birds calling in the reeds. There are no roads and no engines; the stillness is the point.

The name means surface of water, and the community, of Nzema descent, has lived this way for generations, moving between homes by canoe as naturally as you would walk down a street. Children paddle themselves to lessons, and the rhythm of life follows the water rather than the clock.

It is a living village, not an exhibit, so we go quietly and follow the local guide on where to walk and photograph. Best done in the early morning before the wind rises on the lake, it pairs with the western beaches around Busua for a memorable loop. See our western region guide.

Link the wonders without the stress

These are some of the most rewarding places in Ghana, and also some of the furthest apart. A crater lake near Kumasi, a stilt village in the far west, elephants in the north and a canopy on the central coast do not line up neatly on a map, and stitching them together is the whole job of a good itinerary.

Get the sequence wrong and you spend your holiday backtracking on long roads. Get it right, with the drives broken by good stops and the transfers timed sensibly, and the travelling becomes part of the pleasure rather than a tax on it.

To see how it all fits, look at our 14-day Ghana itinerary, built for exactly this kind of trip.

Mole National Park: elephants on foot

Ghana's biggest wildlife draw is Mole National Park, in the northern savannah beyond Tamale. What sets it apart is the walking safari: with an armed ranger you set out on foot and, in the dry season especially, come across wild elephants at the waterholes below the escarpment. Standing on the ground a respectful distance from a bull elephant is a different order of experience from watching one through a windscreen.

The park also holds antelope such as kob and waterbuck, warthogs trotting about with their tails up, troops of baboons, and over three hundred bird species. The main lodge sits on the escarpment with a long view over the plain where animals gather to drink, and the waterhole below is floodlit into the evening.

It is a long drive or a short flight to Tamale then a road transfer, which is why it needs planning, but it is the single most memorable wildlife experience in the country. Our Mole safari guide has the detail on getting there and when to go.

Kakum: a walk through the treetops

Near Cape Coast, Kakum National Park protects a genuine tropical rainforest, and its canopy walkway is the way most people experience it. Seven rope-and-plank bridges are strung between huge emergent trees, taking you up to around thirty metres above the forest floor. The bridges sway as you cross, which is half the thrill, and the platforms let you pause and take in the sea of green.

Early in the morning the canopy is often wrapped in mist, and the forest wakes beneath you with birdsong and the calls of unseen creatures. The park protects forest elephants and rare birds and butterflies, though the canopy walk itself is more about the perspective than the wildlife.

The walk is short and safe but genuinely thrilling if you are wary of heights, and it is best done first thing before the day-trippers arrive and the heat builds. Because it sits close to the Cape Coast and Elmina castles, it slots neatly into a coastal leg of any trip. Our Kakum guide covers timing and what to expect.

Lake Volta and the water country

Lake Volta is a wonder of a different kind, one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, created when the Akosombo Dam closed in the 1960s and flooded the Volta basin. From the hills above Akosombo the water spreads out in long green-fringed fingers, and ferries still link lakeside communities and carry goods, yams and people the length of the lake where no road runs.

A sunset boat trip from the dam area is one of the calmest evenings in the country, the light going gold over the water as fishing boats come in. The lake also feeds the hydroelectric dam that powers much of the country, a piece of engineering history as well as a view.

Further downstream, at Ada, the Volta finally meets the Atlantic in a shifting maze of sandbars and lagoons, good for a laid-back couple of days on the water. The lake and river country offers a gentler natural wonder than the elephants or the canopy, and a fine way to slow the pace mid-trip.

The hills, forests and highland air

Beyond the headline wonders, Ghana's uplands reward the traveller who likes to walk. The Volta highlands around Amedzofe are cool and green, with Mount Afadja, the country's highest peak, offering a stiff but achievable climb and a view towards Togo from the top. The Atewa range and the Kakum forest hold rare birds and butterflies for those who care to look.

The Aburi ridge above Accra is an easy dose of cooler air and huge old trees for those short on time, its botanical gardens a half-day escape from the city heat. These are the places where Ghana feels temperate rather than tropical, a genuine change of climate within a few hours' drive.

If walking is part of what you want from the trip, we can weave the hills in among the bigger wonders so your itinerary has rhythm and variety. Our hiking in Ghana guide sets out the options and the grades.

Ghana's landscapes shift more than most visitors expect for a country of its size. In a single trip you move from Atlantic surf and coconut palms, through dense forest where the canopy closes overhead, into the cool green folds of the Volta hills, and finally out onto open savannah dotted with baobabs. Each brings its own light, its own crops and its own pace of life, from the fishing communities of the coast to the cocoa farmers of the Eastern Region and the shea and yam country of the north. Seeing them back to back is part of what makes a Ghana trip feel bigger than the map suggests, and it is the quiet reason so many first-time visitors start planning a second trip before the first is over.

How the wonders fit into a real route

Laid out on a map, these wonders look like an impossible spread. In practice they string into a clockwise loop that works well over ten days to two weeks. Start on the coast with Kakum and the Cape Coast and Elmina castles, then run west to Busua and paddle out to Nzulezo. From there, cut inland and north to Kumasi for Lake Bosomtwe and the Ashanti craft villages, breaking the long drive at the Kintampo falls.

Push on north to Mole for the walking safari, ideally spending two nights so you catch both a morning and an evening at the waterhole. Then either fly back from Tamale to save a day, or drive south again with a night on Lake Volta at Akosombo to end on the water. The sequence means you are largely moving in one direction rather than doubling back on yourself.

Shorter trips simply take a slice of this: the coastal wonders and Bosomtwe in a week, or the coast and Mole with a domestic flight. The point is to plan the driving as carefully as the sights, because in a country this spread out, a badly ordered route can waste two of your precious days on the road for no reason.

The wildlife beyond the elephants

Mole's elephants get the headlines, but Ghana rewards anyone who looks a little wider. The country sits on a major migratory flyway, and birdlife is rich: hornbills and turacos in the forests, herons and kingfishers along the lakes and lagoons, and hundreds of species recorded at Mole and Kakum alone. Even a casual visitor notices the sunbirds and weaver colonies, their woven nests hanging over the water at Nzulezo and along the Volta.

The Tafi Atome sanctuary in the Volta protects mona monkeys that come down to feed at dawn, and Boabeng-Fiema, further north, shelters black-and-white colobus and mona monkeys that local belief holds sacred, buried with the same rites as people. Along the coast, marine turtles nest on quiet beaches in season, and community projects run respectful night walks to see them.

None of this needs specialist knowledge to enjoy, only a guide who knows where and when to look. We can weight a trip towards the wildlife and the birds if that is your interest, timing the stops for dawn and dusk when the animals are active and the light is best.

Build a trip around the wonders

The reason so few visitors see all of these in one trip is simple: they are scattered, and the drives are long. That is exactly the problem we solve. We sequence the crater lake, the stilt village, the elephants and the canopy into a loop that flows, in a vehicle that copes with the roads, with a driver-guide who knows where the elephants gather and when the canopy is clearest of mist. You get the wonders without the wrestling with logistics.

A first nature-focused trip usually wants ten days to two weeks to do it justice. Send us your dates, your group size and the wonders you most want to reach, and we will build the route, be honest about what fits, and price it clearly. Curious why Ghana rewards this kind of trip? Our reasons to visit guide makes the case.

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