A weekend in Cape Coast
By Taylor Swanson
I went to Cape Coast on the weekend with most of the volunteers from last week and a whole slew of new volunteers. They all seem like great folk and if I don’t see them this weekend or next I will most definitely be in Krokrobite on the weekend of the 24th and hopefully they will all be there. Back to Cape Coast, well, more accurately, Elmina, as we decided to opt for Elmina, or rather, St. George Castle over the Cape Coast Castle. This was mainly due to the fact that St. George is the oldest castle south of the sahara! Originally built by the Portuguese in 1481 it was taken over by the Dutch in the 1600s and then by the British in 1867. It has been Ghanaian since Ghana gained independence 50 years ago and has been declared an international heritage site thanks to the dreadful history of the slave trade that is still evident in its dark, dank dungeons. Our guide was excellent which alwasy helps to bring history alive. On Sunday we went to Kakum National Park to go on the canopy walk. It was an awesome experience, if not a tad terrifying. Built by Canadian mountaineers, upon close inspection one wonders if the guide meant to say boy scouts-boy scouts without many patches. To say that it is a dodgy set-up is an understatement as 2X4s are slapped half-hazardly to trees and walk ways are actually ladders with boards across them. Anyways, we all survived and after rushing back to eat lunch we headed home, but before we could leave we had to purchase trotro tickets which seems like a pretty mundane event; however, I volunteered to purchase all 12 tickets(the group was previously upwards of 20 but we had split up over the day) so I made my way into the crowded trotro station, holding 300,000 cedis. It didn’t take long to find the real reason for the crowded station-Ghana was playing Korea in a wolrd cup warm up match, regardless, I survived, secured the tickets and we were on our way (after purchasing the much-sought-after FanChoco (frozen chocolate milk in a bag).
