Payton’s Blog

cape coast and kakum

Saturday I finally had a chance to do some traveling!  A few people here were nice enough to take me to the Cape Coast and Kakum national park.  We had to leave early because it was quite a long journey.  We went to Accra via tro-tro, this is a sort of taxi-van…basically anyone who owns a van can drive along the road and solicit riders for a very very low price (I was told tro tro is a nice way of saying cheap in Ga).  The ride is not very glamorous, there are sometimes 20 people crammed in a sweaty old van with a man hanging out the door yelling for more riders, but it was the equivalent of one dollar for an hour drive so I can’t complain.  In Accra, we met a few people from the church who are our age and headed for the bus station.  The ’station’, which was a long line of buses along a busy street, was so crowded with vendors trying to sell snacks, clothes, and random goods to travelers.  These buses were actually pretty nice because they are subsidized by the government to promote public transport so it was a nice 2 hour drive to the Cape Coast.  The only bad part was the highway, there are small villages along the highway and there are no walls or medians so there are speedbumps–yes speedbumps—on the highway before and after each village.  As soon as I would fall asleep…klunk klunk klunk.. at 60mph.

The city of Cape was like nothing I have ever seen before.  I thought that the streets here in Teshie were crowded with vendors but this was incredible.  There were blocks and blocks of tiny shops selling anything you can imagine, and I think that there was an inner part that we did not even enter.  This is a fishing community so there were women carrying huge wooden trays of smoked fish on their heads, along with women and children carrying the usual baskets of water, bread, clothes, biscuits on their heads as well.  We ate lunch here before heading to Kakum.  We stopped at this vendor’s stations that was a table with several pots and pans spread across it that were full of home cooked Ghanian food which she spooned out onto a reusable plate (I poured some bottled water over mine before she put the food on) and grabbed the piece of chicken with her bare hands.  Without a doubt the most unsanitary meal I have ever eaten, and that is saying a lot, but I lived.  There was an old table behind the food station where we sat and ate with bugs buzzing around and live chickens walking around our feet. There are lots of bugs because the city is so unsanitary; I am not trying to be rude, I talked about this with the Ghanians who were with me.  There are open ditches/gutters along all of the streets that are filled with trash and urine.  People literally pee everywhere, it is not an offense to pee on the side of the street in broad daylight. It is my worst fear to fall in one of these gutters, needless to say why

So we hopped a tro tro the 30min to Kakum for another dollar.  Kakum is a rain forrest reserve and national park, and the main attraction there is this canopy walk in the trees (will explain later).  The drive there was nice because I got to see some really small villages, the kind that most people probably think of, with mud-walled huts with leaves for roofs (not all of the houses were like this but a lot were).  When we were dropped at the entrance we had to pay 10 cents to enter then walked up a big driveway to the main building.  Here we purchased tickets to the canopy walk for just under $2 and found some actual toilets with tp!!  Our group was set to leave for the canopy walk at 1 so we waited in line for about 15 min then made the hike up a hill with rock steps for about a mile, and up 200+ feet.  Then we waited for 2hrs in line for the canopy walk, but it was so worth it!  While waiting in line the tour guide would point out some trees and stuff but we didn’t see any animals bc they are nocturnal.  The coolest part about the wait was the rain; it rained but we didn’t get wet because the trees of the canopy were so big and full.  It is hard to describe because you could see the rain through the gaps in the branches but it seemed like it just didn’t come through, it was really awesome.  So we finally got to the canopy walk.  It is a series of 7 rope bridges suspended between really huge trees.  There are two cables along the top of the bridges with roped hanging down from them and making a sling.  Then there is netting from about waist to armpit high on both sides.  The part you walk on is the middle of this sling and it is literally made of layed out metal ladders with wooden boards laying up the middle on the rungs. The lady right in front of us took 5 steps and started screaming and bawling so everyone behind her had to walk back so she could get off, this mad it a little scary but it was really funny bc this was like a 40-something lady, not a kid.  So needless to say this is super wobbly but once I was walking on it, it feels pretty stable.  I will post pictures when I get home, but the view was just indescribable.  In every direction all you could see was rain forrest, no city, no buildings just huge trees poking out of all the other trees.  Some of the bridges had to be 200 feet off the ground, but this was hard to judge because you couldn’t see the ground just more trees and plants.  So we took a lot of pictures and got to the end.  Then it was a muddy walk down hill back to the base where we started.

Tro tro back to Cape Coast to go to the Cape Coast castle, it was the hub of the West African slave trade in the 1800s and is now a historical site and tourist attraction.  I honestly wasn’t really excited about this but I felt like I had to do it for my grandpa, who always makes us go to every historical site anywhere we ever vacation (seriously, I mean detours to museums and memorials on the way to the beach) but I am so glad that we went!  It was a short tour, maybe 45min but really interesting and a little sad.  There were these tiny dungeons where they crammed hundreds of slaves, and the guide told stories of all of the terrible things associated with it.  The castle itself if more like a fort.  It has tall white walls with an interior courtyard protected by cannons facing the water.  The view from here is amazing; it is right on the beach but the part directly in front is a shoreline of rough rock.  The water slammed against the rock and it was so breezy and beautiful (I promise pictures when I get home!).  Right after the female dungeon there is the famous “door of no return” this is the door that the slaves exited before going out to the boats to sail to Britain and the US and be sold.  The door is actually labeled door of no return, it was so sad and cruel.  Outside the door there was a patio, just past the patio there were local fishermen coming in for the day.  They were bringing in their nets and it smelled so pungently of fish, but it was a cool site to see.

Just outside the castle there are a few shops with carved art and jewelry and stuff so I bought a few gifts then we went to the resturant to eat.  On the inside, you would have never know it was Africa; it looked like a beach-side resturant in any costal city, playing ragae music, and overlooking the water.  I could tell that this was a big tourist site because over half of the people were white, I think most of them were Eueopean and most of the ones in Kakum were as well.  Before last weekend I had literally seen 4 white people in 2 weeks, this does not bother me at all, but it explains why so many kids are either scared of me or come up and touch my skin!  Anyway, I had my fill of Ghanian food for the day from the street cart so I ordered a cheeseburger, I know really boring but it sounded amazing.  It was a little burned but it reminded me of home for a few minutes

Our long day ended with a taxi drive to the bus station and a 2hour ride in the dark back to Accra, then a final tro tro to Teshie, and a short taxi drive to the mission.  Whew…it was a long day but so much fun and it was nice to get out and explore other parts of Ghana.

I am excited to go to Accra next Saturday for shopping!!  I saved that trip for the last weekend so I wouldn’t spend all of my money