Day 13 - Elmina Castle and Rainforest Tour

We started our day one hour ahead of schedule. A short bus trip to the Kakum National Park and we were ready for a canopy bridge walk. We took a short hike through an extremely humid rainforest where we had the opportunity to learn a little bit about the different kind of trees in the area. Everybody but Mark, who was not feeling very well, fought their fears of heights and walked across seven narrow canopy rope bridges. The adventure took a little over 2 hours, but certainly will stay with us for much longer.

Back on the road, we stopped for lunch at the Hans Cottage – a hotel/restaurant surrounded by a pond infested with crocodiles. We had a nice buffet of rice, red-red, chicken, fish, and beans (a menu commonly found in this part of the country).

Our next stop was at the Elmina Castle -a historical land mark built by the Portuguese over 500 years ago that was eventually used as a transfer facility for the slave trade. The castle is a magnificent sight from the outside. Inside, however, we witnessed disturbing sights of cells with little or no ventilation, walls covered with algae, and unbearable smells of human waste. It was definitely a powerful and moving experience for all of us.

Next we headed to a cocoa processing plant in Takoradi which was about a 45 minute bus ride from the Elmina Castle. While driving to the coco processing facility, Jon Munger took a look at his plane ticket a noticed that we had three hours until our flight was going to leave Accra – meaning our schedules said we were leaving on the 19th of February but our tickets were set for the 18th. There was not much we could do as we were about 3.5 hours away from the airport and our luggage was another hour to the hotel. We hoped the travel agency could get this fixed and we would be able to leave Accra as we had planned the next day. Continuing on in light of this hiccup, we arrived at the Cocoa plant and took a tour which was very interesting. (The aroma of the plant smelled like chocolate but the cocoa beans did not taste like they smelled.)

We eventually made it back to the hotel, had dinner, and wondered if we would be able to get another flight to Dubai.

Trip Writers: Carlo Bocardo, Jon Munger & Kevin Healy