Paga Travel Guide

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One of the very typical things you should see in the area north from Bolgatanga, are the houses with complex drawings on the walls. The village of Sirigu is famous for it, but in Paga you can see them too. Here you will see the local symbol, the crocodile, painted on the walls a lot.

People will offer you a guided (and expensive) tour through the village all the time, but along the mainroad you can see some of these buildings too. When I was taking a picture of then though, someone yelled at me that that was somehow forbidden, and so he told me in these exact words "next time you come here, I'll slap you!". Decide yourself if you want to take that risk :)

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The mainattraction of Paga are the sacred crocodiles that live there. In two "crocodile ponds" there are hundreds of them. There are many different stories about how these crocs became sacred, but the central point is that one day the crocodiles promissed the people of Paga that they would never hurt them again, if they would respect the animals in the same way.

Eversince the two are big friends, and the crocodiles are spoiled by the humans. It is said that the animals wander around the town at night and even lay their eggs inside the houses. Anyways, there are no fences around the ponds, so the crocs are free to go anywhere they want.

When you enter the area around the crocodile pond, the commercial circus begins. Five people attack you, all trying to make some money. You start with paying an entrance fee of 20.000 cedis ($ 2,-) per person, plus a camera fee of 5.000 cedis. And then you have to buy a (living) chicken too for 30.000 cedis.

Then all of you go to the lakeside and a crocodile automatically comes out. You can take dozens of pictures with it, all in the standard poses the guide tells you, and then the animal gets the chicken, eats it and disappears.

It's quite a nice thing to see, but way too commercialized so it gets annoying.

Another clearly commercially exploited thing in Paga is its Chief's Palace. In both Tamale and Wa I visited one too, and both times it was for free and I was welcomed sincerely and spontaneously. In Paga though, it was indicated with tourist signs, and there was a entrance fee I had to pay.

That is why I didn't feel like visiting this one. They started with asking an entrance fee of 80.000 cedis ($ 8,-) per person. You can bargain about the price, but it just didn't feel sincere to me. There are enough other places where you can visit a Chief's Palace in a more authentic way then here in Paga.