A ROOM WITH A VIEW…OF PEACOCKS

In Ghana as anywhere else, there are hotels, and then they are hotels. You can stay at somewhere like this–moderately priced and uninteresting:

OAK PLAZA HOTEL ON SPINTEX ROAD

Or here, expensive and uninteresting:

THE LOBBY AT THE MOVENPICK HOTEL IN ACCRA

But wherever I travel–Ghana or otherwise–I try to find accommodations with character, theme or personality, like the unique Esther’s Hotel at which I am staying now. It has warmth and individual charm that most hotels could not possibly achieve in an urban environment such as Accra, among them the peacocks that wander the grounds and episodically take off and perch on the roof.

PEACOCK, PEAHEN AND CHICK (NOT THAT KIND) IN THE DRIVEWAY

In the morning, I get a visit from this chap outside my window:

Although they are not soundless birds, they don’t make a racket in the morning like a rooster or infernal guinea fowls would.

I find wood floors and ceilings irresistible. To me, wood is warm and welcome by its nature, whereas gleaming, artificial surfaces are not very compelling.

Who could resist something like this:

HALLWAY AT ESTHER’S

Or this:

ONE OF THE ROOMS AT ESTHER’S

Or this:

LOBBY AT ESTHER’S WITH FREE WIFI (YAY)

Incidentally it strikes me this is a great setting for an Agatha Christie type of murder mystery: a victim found in bed with a silver dagger in his back, a certain finite number of suspects–each of whom had a reason to hate the murdered victim, doors with the old-fashioned kind of keys and locks (none of that keycard stuff), wood floors and stairs that creak slightly with each footfall, (someone in one of the rooms would have heard the creaking late at night), an open window with the mosquito netting cut but no footprints in the garden outside . . . At the denouement of the story, our Hercules Poirot or Miss Marple-like hero would gather all the suspects in the lobby shown above, and in the classically tortuous manner of Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, he would show who is the culprit and why.

Esther’s Hotel is seventeen years old and owned by a Ghanaian woman whose name really is Esther. I talked to her this morning just before she went off for a game of golf, and she explained her love of nature, birds of all kinds, and lush vegetation–hence the peacocks in the setting of gardens that are well-tended but exuberant in character.

THIS TIME OF YEAR, GHANA’S WEATHER IS COOL AND PERFECT FOR SITTING IN THE GARDEN

 

 

 

 

 

 

Esther lived with her physician uncle in Germany for many years from the age of ten, and of note, the bathroom fixtures are all recognizably European in style from Siemens. Her passion for the hospitality industry was born when she was very young, and she clearly enjoys what she does. The staff take her cue of personalized attention and care, and the fact that her senior employee has been at the hotel from the very beginning says a lot. The food is excellent.

In two days, I’m headed for Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, where I hope to stay at a unique location again, as well as investigate the debacle of illegal gold mining, the setting for the fourth Darko Dawson novel, Nothing That Glitters.