Accra to London over land for adventure, charity, the story of Wanderlust Ghana tourism enthusiasts
They started the expedition of driving from one continent to the other from Accra through Sunyani to Dormaa and then entered Cote d'Ivoire.

Accra to London over land for adventure, charity, the story of Wanderlust Ghana tourism enthusiasts

Enoch Darfah Frimpong

It is an epic story of a road trip from one continent to the other, that is from Accra in Ghana through many African countries to London in the United Kingdom through other European countries, a journey of about 10,000 kilometres.

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That is the journey Kwabena Peprah and his colleagues from Wanderlust Ghana, a group of philanthropists and tourism enthusiasts have embarked on. 

The participants are Richard Anim, Kwadwo Saka, Kwame Peprah, Kofi Peprah, Kwadwo Prakah-Asante, Franklin Peters and his son Quincy, Joseph, Cyprian Ed, Kwabena Ayirebi and his brother Kojo and the only female in the pack, Nana Afua Serwaa, also known as "Shecanic". She is an auto repair technician on a mission to master the mechanics of automobiles across diverse terrains and climates. 

The common trip has always been stories of people travelling by road from Europe to Ghana, but this time around the tourism enthusiasts from Ghana are doing the reverse.

They started the expedition of driving from one continent to the other from Accra on Sunday [July 23, 2023] through Aburi, Nsawam, Kumasi, Sunyani to Dormaa and then entered Cote d'Ivoire via Gonokrom.

They were 12 people when they started the journey but one person dropped off in Senegal because of work related reasons and two others also dropped off in Morocco.

By Friday [August 4, 2023], they were at the outskirts of Monaco in Europe and were about to enter France, having moved through five African countries, Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco and entered Europe by a ferry on the Mediterranean to Algeciras in Spain, before driving to Barcelona via Valencia. They spent three days in country in Morocco.

They should be at the end of their journey in London by Sunday, August 6.

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After that, they will ship their vehicles back to Ghana.

They started the journey as a group of 12 people and are using five different Ghanaian registered vehicles, a Mercedez Benz G-Wagon, two Toyota Landcruisers (V8), Lexus RX 350 and a Ford F150, Raptor.

On a daily basis, each of the vehicles they are using uses about 250 litres of fuel. Averagely they do about 800km to 900km in a day.

They have shared videos on social media moving through the desert and how some of the vehicles - Toyota - have had brake pads changed many times while the others are still moving without any brake pads changed.

Graphic Online understands that Teddy for instance had been planning to go on this trip for a very long time. He had wanted them to go in 2020 but the COVID-19 pandemic prevented them from doing so.

Ghana Card

Kwabena Peprah explains that all they needed was their Ghana Card [ECOWAS card] which they used to travel through West African countries until their entry into Mauritania where they had to pay to get visa on arrival. It is 60 Euros but they had to pay 120 Euros due to what they termed as extortion by security officers.

They entered Morocco from Mauritania with visa on arrival at US$10 and entered Europe through Spain via the Mediterranean with Shengen visas and then heading towards London with their UK visa.

They started the journey as a team of 12 Ghanaians and expecting to cover a total of about 10,000 km by the time they reach London.

The expedition is also being used to raise funds for rural primary schools in Ghana, according to Kwabena Peprah.

When they entered Spain, the team in a radio interview monitored by Graohic Online on Accra-based Peace FM shared their motivation for embarking on the extraordinary journey.

They explained that they were inspired by stories of people traveling from Europe to Ghana and other African countries by road and to other African nations and hence they decided to attempt this adventure as a fun activity, alongside exploring other nations.

“We are explorers and we are doing this for fun. We've read about people driving from Europe to Ghana all the time, and we also planned to do it and we are almost there.”

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Accra to Cape Town trip next

They are hoping to drive from Accra in Ghana to Cape Town in South in 2024.

BBC interview

Asked why they decided to do "this epic journey" in a BBC television interview monitored by Graphic Online when they reached the outskirts of Monaco on Friday, Kwabena Peprah answered; "the simplest answer is why not. We are adventure enthusiasts and tourism enthusiasts. We've been driving around our continent, we've been driving around our country and we decided to take it to the next level." 

"But most importantly we knew we will get some traction with the media and we'd use it to raise funds to help under served communities in our country through EduSpots, which is a philanthropy organization, which creates educational hotspots for schools in deprived areas.

Mauritania experience

Highlighting their experience on the road, Kwabena Peprah said "the craziest was when police men extorted us and kept us for seven hours in Mauritania. That is not a friendly country, they started off by giving us one reason after the other on why we needed to stay with them. They were going to impound our cars for two days, just because they said there was an infraction on their traffic rules. They were made to pay a fine for tinted windows.

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He said there are two favourite countries, and that one was Senegal and the other was Morocco. "They are beautiful, they are clean and the infrastructure is awesome. The people very friendly. There was a police man in Morocco, we stopped at a traffic light and he came over and he was curious about the [Ghana vehicle registration number] plates, and he asked us, which country and we said Ghana, and he goes like Abedi Pele, our footballer, I said yes, this guy [policeman] just turned on his sirens and gave us an escort out of town, it was so wonderful."

Kwabena Peprah explained that when they get to London, they will engage in a number of activities with the Ghana High Commission organising for them to meet other people to pitch their philantropic plans.

"We will be having a party in the park with the Ghanaian community next Saturday."

To support the fundraiser, visit EduSpots.org    

Writer's email: [email protected] 

Below is Kwabena Peprah's post on Facebook explaining how it all started and the plan

Chale this is long. I won’t add pictures. If you don’t read too, you’ll lack context when you begin seeing pictures on our timelines. To read or not to read?

10,000km OVERLAND (ACCRA to LONDON)
The details of how this idea started are quite fuzzy but I am certain there was alcohol involved somehow and then there’s definitely Richard Anim. The only thing I remember is that around 2018, this idea was birthed.
It was just an idea and I kept talking about it and inviting all my friends to come along. There are those like Kow who rubbished the idea outright and then around 2019 I mentioned it to Kwadwo Saka. He jumped immediately and said, “why not? Let’s go”. We began preparing towards a summer 2020 trip.
In choosing vehicles for the trip, we considered all options but initially, the whole idea was to get any of the auto marketing companies to sponsor the trip by providing a vehicle and then for them to own the media output for their promotionals. In my mind, a vivid picture of a very dirty Ghanaian registered off roader parked in front of Harrods or Trafalgar Square seemed like a very good idea for billboards in Ghana. I felt they’d speak to the reliability of whichever vehicle was pictured on that billboard.
We flirted with almost every major car dealer in Ghana and they all literally told us to fork off. Tsigliwigliadzi Kormetorkpor Ometahidior tried to bring in Kantanka so we promote “made” in Ghana but the CEO wouldn’t even meet with us. We decided to go with whichever vehicles we had at the time and so we selected July 25th 2020 as departure date.
Then COVID hit and Fellow Gheneiens locked down the land borders for a good while. Truth is, many countries did same and with the travel restrictions around the world, the idea had to be shelved.
Since this travel bug had bitten us so badly, we had no choice but to begin a series of domesticated road trips to while away the time and acquire enough experience. To date, we have circled Ghana so many times that I have lost count. I know it’s somewhere in a high double digit figure.
Anytime we’ve spoken about this, we’ve had recruits and our numbers kept rising but from our experience with local road trips, we knew a lot would fall by the wayside before D day and we were not wrong. Many are those who get a hard on at the mention of anything exciting but then get flaccid as soon as push comes to shove. I used the word flaccid here again for one of my favorite friends who seems to like this word so much.
We eventually had a final list of committed travelers and we did a couple of trial runs across the West African sub region. That in itself has been a lot of fun.
We planned to set off on Sunday July 23.
Confirmed participants were myself, Saka, Fred Papa Kwofie, Richard, Kwame Peprah, Kofi Peprah, Kwadwo Prakah-Asante, Franklin Peters and his son Quincy, Joseph, Cyprian Ed, Kwabena Ayirebi and his brother Kojo and the only female in the pack, Serwa the Shecanic. She loves cars and bikes like no other.
The vehicles were; my Landcruiser, Cyprian’s Landcruiser, Kwadwo’s Raptor, Fred’s Defender, Joe’s G63 and Frank’s RX350 (the most vilified machine in the list).
A lot of factors conspired to make us depart a day earlier and without Fred and the plan has changed a bit somehow. Work related issues will make some of the participants fly out back to Accra from Dakar and Casablanca, others will have to fly out to South Africa and the Netherlands as well. We also expect to pick up some passengers in Bamako, Casablanca and Amsterdam. The number of people expected to arrive in the UK are 9 in all.
I’ll be writing in real time as events unfold and sometimes, at the end of day. Due to security and other concerns, the first public post will be when we enter Europe and it will be an aggregation of all my daily compilations. From there, I will give real time and daily updates as and when necessary.
As usual, I will not edit my writing and so they will be raw. If bad grammar, typos and the contents rub off wrongly on you, I’m sure you can find one of the “unfriend”, “unfollow” or “block” buttons to prevent yourself from being assaulted by my BS.
THE ROUTE
Our planned route is to take a long drive on day 1 to Bouake in Côte d’Ivoire, using the border at Gonokrom near Dormaa Ahenkro.
Day 2, Bamako, Mali.
Day 3, Dakar, Senegal. We will stay an extra day to service the cars etc.
Day 5, Nouakchott, Mauritania.
Day 6, Dakhla, Morocco.
Day 7, Guelmim, Morocco.
Day 8, Casablanca, Morocco.
Day 9, Tangier, Morocco.
Day 10, We will cross from Tangier to Algeciras in Spain with the ferry and continue to sleep in Valencia.
Day 11, Monaco.
Day 12, Lake Como.
Day 13, Frankfurt.
Day 14, Amsterdam. I have some business meetings in Amsterdam and my business partner would have flown ahead to begin them. My responsibility is to close these meetings so I will arrive at the tail end. We can chill and work at the same time just as we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I will stay an extra day.
Day 16, London, via Calais / Dover.
As with all things, we have carefully assessed the risks, made mitigation plans and even though we know that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, we are in good spirits.
My favorite question is, what is the worst that could happen?
1. We could have a road accident. As long as we sit in cars daily, that’s a high possibility and we can only try to be careful. If it happens, it does. No biggie.
2. We could have mechanical damage on any of the cars. If it does, we just carpool and leave that vehicle somewhere for my mechanic to go fix and bring it back at his convenience. Nothing spoil. This option is only available as long as the potential damage is before Mauritania since the process of getting a visa for my mechanic will be quite long. If it happens after Mauritania, we will be on the coast so we just tow said car to the closest port and ship it home. We moove.
3. Terrorists or bandits could kidnap us for ransom. We are all Ghanaians and no one will come pay any ransom on our behalf. They’ll get tired and let us go or they can take all our money and cars, and leave us by the roadside to hitchhike home. If they kill us, that one dierrr no problem because after all everyone will die someday. Despite these thoughts, we have still done a lot of homework and are quite prepared for this.
4. Another risk factor is that our vehicles will not be allowed into either Morocco or Europe for a myriad of technicalities. If this does happen, it is what it is. Again, ship the cars home from the closest port and fly on to london to have a great time. Life goes on.
A lot of people are rooting for us. If it is genuine, whichever deity you believe in should reward you plenty for your good thoughts.
If you even think WKHKYD much less say it, your MORDA!!!
If you wish us to fail for any reason so you can say you told us so, or to reaffirm your impossibility filled thoughts, you too your MORDA some. Get a life. If you don’t let your friend cut 9, you too you won’t cut 10. Read that in Twi.
D-DAY MINUS 1
SATURDAY 22 JULY 2023
TARGET - SUNYANI
360km
My people are playing with the 10am departure time we agreed on. It’s raining and cloudy in most parts. Everyone is here apart from the Ayirebi crew. At 10, we will move and they’ll have to catch up. After all, we are going to Sunyani pe.
We set off at a leisurely pace at 10am without them and asked them to try and catch us up in the Aburi mountains. They did catch up in Aburi. We continued into Nsawam and then connected to the N6 headed to Kumasi. It was rainy, misty and visibility was poor all around so we took our fine time. After all, the destination for today is Sunyani and as usual, our accommodation has to be at Eusbett Hotel, Sunyani. Of course, #koobipizza will cry.
In this 5 car convoy, I’ve driven with each and every one of them on road trips but this is the first time we are all driving together. The chemistry between Saka and I is such that we can literally do a road trip blindfolded and we’d know what to do at every turn. I have also done this route twice already in the last as many months so I became the lead car with him pushing the rear guard. We have strict road protocols and we communicate with two way radios.
We ate fufuo at Jofel, Anyinam and got to KNUST on schedule. Uneventful trip but for the usual suspects of idiots and psychopaths sitting behind steering wheels in this country of ours.
We continued into Sunyani on time and Eusbett has not disappointed. The ever affable Robert Mensah always manages to exceed our increasingly erratic and odd demands with that shy smile of his. God bless you my boss.
To be continued……….. Read also: Accra to London over land

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