Ghana

First post of a new blog, so fingers crossed this works!


Landed in Accra on the 30th after a normal flight, apart from the landing where the right wing came very, very bloody close to the ground. We landed at 5am, and the sun was just coming up and it was 25 degrees!
Stayed at a hostel that day (and night) in Accra. It's not a very nice plac to be honest, with little to do, but luckily we were wiped from the flight and heat, so had a good sleep, shower and wander about, then headed to Takoradi to stay with Jo's old gap year school owner Auntie Love. She lives in a what we would view as a shanty town (I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but it's the best way to describe it) in very poor surroundings, but has room for us and was welcoming.
The following day we went into Takoradi and took a tro-tro (heavily overloaded minibus that looks like the love-child of all my dad's worst vans combined) to Busua beach. This is a sort of beach town with a few hostels, so we found a cheap double room for the night, dumped our stuff in the room and headed to the beach. We showered and deet-ed up to keep away the mozzies, and went for some food, drinks, and ended up in a little outside cafe thing sharing choc and banana pancakes with tea, playing Bananagrams.
The next day was spent on the beach which was PACKED due to the bank holiday, so had lots of chats with lots of people and kids. Ghanians are the friendliest people I've ever met, they just come up to you to chat and ask where you're from and practice their English. About half the time they'll then ask for money or something, but they are very happy just to see you. As white people it's almost like being famous - you aren't seen very often at all, and stand out a mile!
The next day (Tuesday 3rd Jan) we took a tro-tro to Cape Coast. This is where the biggest fort was built for slave export, and had 2 million go through it's "door of no return" out to the ships to the Americas. Not a good feeling being a Brit. Seems we have done very little in history to be proud of. The West coast of Africa was originally shared between the Portuguese and Dutch, and they paid the local chiefs rents for the land which they built forts, and traded with the locals for gold. Then we waded in to take people away as slaves, making a fortune from it, and kicking out the other nations!... I'll get off the soapbox now.

Anyway, we found a nice German run hostel in Cape Coast, and decided this morning to stay another night and go to the canopy walk in the rainforest at Kakum today and to Elmina tomorrow (another fort).

Ghana is lovely, but there isn't really that much to do to fill 2 weeks, so we've bought our flight to South Africa forward to the 10th, and will go to the Green Turtle (another beach resort) for a couple of days, visit the new site of Jo's old school (as it has moved since she was last here), and prob put in the next update when we arrive in SA, where we'll hopefully do our PADI open water, and do some rock climbing at Table Mountain!