Home » Ghana » African Adventure to Ghana - Summer 2003 (part II)

My summer of 2003 was a very exciting one. I went to Jonquière, Quebec to learn French for 5 weeks, and with only a few days to prepare (including a party at my friend Paul's cottage in between) I was off to Accra, Ghana landing July 1 (Canada Day, and also Ghanaian Independance Day). After that, within 3 days I was back at Ottawa to complete my Economics degree, so it was a very action-packed summer.

African Adventure to Ghana - Summer 2003 (part II)

Andrew Wozniuk
2006-04-02 10:41:09

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/>This weekend I went to Cape Coast. It is a city about 150km (It was the first capital city of Ghana). Now it is only 150 km, but it took us 4 hours to get there (packed in a Tro-Tro (a big van with 5 people sitting across with no aisle, and 6 rows of people). and 3 hours to get back. It only cost 12,000 cedis ($2 CAN) each way, so you can't complain. There was a lot of construction on the road, so we were detoured onto dirt roads beside it with huge pot-holes which only a Hummer could cross comfortably. On the way there, President Kufuor's convoy passed us. Then when we arrived, we went to Elmina (a city beside Cape Coast) where there was a big festival for the beginning of the fishing season and the President spoke and everyone was having a great time. I think a tomato paste company sponsored the festival because there were a lot of signs for Gino (tomato paste). Their slogan is "Gino users... Happy people." I didn't realize tomato paste could make such a difference :) There was some heavy rain before we came, but it stopped for when we were there. Then we found a hotel where 3 of us slept in a double room for 60,000 cedis ($10 CAN). It wasn't a Hilton, but it was a place to stay.

The next day we toured Cape Coast Castle, the largest castle in sub-saharan Africa. The castle has a deep and moving history. Learning about the magnitude of the slave trade and seeing the horrible conditions which the slaves were in was quite the experience. One can only hope that such an act against humanity does not occur again.

After the castle, we went to Kakum National Park which is in the rainforest. It took an hour to get there by Tro-Tro, and it was nice weather, but once we got there, the rain came down like crazy. After about 15-20 min it stopped. It was cool though because I was able to truly experience the "rain" forest, and after the rain stopped, there was some mist that was hanging around the trees. It was really cool. We went ...