After saying our farewells to the jovial folk in the ‘Lord is My Shepherd Guesthouse’ we headed out on the road to Wa. The road was fairly rough but was the route used by all the local transport and so was well trodden. I was admiring the fistfulls of cash that you get in Ghana due to the fact that the largest note is worth under 2 pounds when the car seemed to lose power and stalled, grinding to a halt a few metres further on. A kind of nervous, here we go again, groan/laugh came out of andy’s mouth, while i just laughed!
We were really out in the sticks for this little adventure, but as mentioned this was the main route so we were fairly confident of meeting lorries/busses going our way. A good piece of detective work by Mr Polhill following an initial check of the fuel pump led us to tentatively unscrew the timing belt inspection cover. On doing so a pulpy mess which had bits of timing belt in it dropped out. A half hearted attempt at getting into the belt housing followed, but due to the lack of tools and the incessant attacks by insects we resigned ourselves to the fact that we needed to be towed.
It was also a time when we discussed the best way to continue as resultant engine damage could put us on an early flight home. In order to relax while we waited for other road users we got the lap-top out and started to watch ‘Open Water’ - not a terribly relaxing film, but killed a bit of time.
Eventually a bus stopped next to us and the driver offered to take one of us into Wa in order to organise a vehicle to tow us. I was volunteered and so crawled in to the already packed bus for the bone shaking hour at ridiculous speed along the corrugated track to the town. Here the bus driver took me to a local mechanic who seemed to specialise in Land Rovers, well he had a number of clapped out ones all around the compound! If the beast didn’t survive she would be in good company I thought. He was ever confident though that after getting the car to him he would fix it. The bus driver offered to be the tow man along with two trainee mechanics and the bus drivers mate and myself we had a return party. A pre payment of 200,000 cedis secured the services of the above and so we headed out to the crippled Camilla.
I was slightly concerned as it was now getting dark and after two trips along this road i was starting to feel rather tired but the team was insistent that the job be done tonight. An hour later we arrived at the car as the sun disappeared over the horizon. A system of tow ropes was hashed together and we set off. Over the next two hours I am amazed still that we did not destroy both cars with a combination of the poor road conditions and the bus drivers F1 style driving. Not to mention the fact that on almost 50% of the starts he accelerated so hard that the ropes snapped and frayed causing it to get shorter and shorter and the need for Andy’s concentration to be greater and greater.
We did however against the odds arrive at the police checkpoint outside Wa. Here we were greeted by a rather amusing police man who had the kind of voice that makes it sound like he is always making a joke. So when he insisted that we spend a night in the cells and go to court in the morning to be tried for not having a towing licence i assumed he was joking and burst out laughing, playing along by asking him what kind of sentence you get for such a crime?
He wasn’t joking though but luckily the ever subtle bus driver transferred a wad of notes from my wallet to the policemans pocket and with it we were instructed to proceed. The policeman however was not happy with our tow rope and only just let us get away with using it, so when the driver did his usual trick of a rally start and snapped it again we were less than impressed. It was fixed one more time and clutch control explained to the driver, then we were in Wa!
