24 April 2007 - 13:01

Well into the second half of our trip, Cailin and I decided to stick around the area for a couple days, using our free lodging in El Mina as a base for a few daytrips in the surrounding area.  The first of these was to Kakum National Park, a rainforest preserve about half an hour north of Cape Coast.  We went up there by public transportation, which entailed us hanging out at the van station for about half an hour.  Sitting in public transportation stations in West Africa is interesting, and often comical, because you have to wait around for a while until your ride leaves, giving you plenty of time to people-watch without looking out of place like you would if you were just sitting around anywhere else in town.  These stations always have a very active crowd of people selling random things from plates, boxes, bowls, baskets, and bundles balanced atop their heads.  In the twenty or so minutes that we waited for our van to fill up that would drop us off at Kakum, I made the following list of things that I saw people selling off the top of their heads…

hard-boiled eggs, soap, flip-flops, loofa-esque bath scrubbies, meat pies, bags of water, spoons and knives, matches, batteries, toothbrushes and toothpaste, scissors, fresh-baked bread loaves, sugar cane, bolts of cloth, bags of ice cream, scarves , beverage coolers, enameled bowls, sealable plastic containers, fish and bagged shrimp, yogurt, popcorn, kaftans, dry spaghetti (in a strainer), crackers, tomato sauce, condensed milk, shrink-wrapped snack plates with chips and candy, bananas and apples, pens and planners, keychains, razor blades, shoe polish, gum, combs, backpacks and purses, bread rolls (w/optional butter), car air fresheners, peeled oranges

When we finally got off from our short ride to the entrance of Kakum, we found that it was quite a popular place – lots of tourists and school field trips had beat us up there, which we later found was not unusual, since the park has over 30,000 visitors a year. It was no surprise then, that we didn’t see animals on our visit, even though the park was rumored to be home to lots of butterflies, several monkey species, and forest elephants, among others. The only animal we saw was a hand-sized scorpion, which our guide pointed out to us after she saw it scurry across the trail.
 

But animals weren’t the reason we came to Kakum (in fact, the only animal we saw the whole time we were there was the hand-sized scorpion below). The park is home to Africa’s only rainforest canopy walk, a series of seven rope bridges suspended in the canopy of the forest, high above the ground. About half of the people in our group returned, shaking, after walking across the first segment of the bridges, but the rest of us finished without any problems. The bridges are suspended between several kapok trees, which shoot out much higher than the upper canopy layer, which allowed us a beautiful view of the top of the rainforest, as well as a stunning view looking down through the layers below us.

One of the things that impressed me most was how there was a totally different microclimate within the rainforest, evident within a few minutes of hiking into it. Once you get inside, the temperature changes, the humidity escalates rapidly, and the amount of sunlight decreases significantly…just like all the sciences textbooks in grade school used to say.

On the way back to Cape Coast from Kakum, Cailin and I stopped for lunch at a hotel just off the road for lunch. The owner of the hotel had built the restaurant over a pond filled with crocodiles, which lounge around on the banks and float in the water, at times, less than five feet away from where we were eating. The trees surrounding the pond were completely full of weaver bird nests – more than I have ever seen in one place, which was interesting, since the only other place I’ve seen weaver bird nests in West Africa was in the pond near Kiffa where we saw crocodiles also.

After lunch was over, we walked along a path near the pond to see what we could see, and on our way back, we found our waitress holding a piece of meat on a bamboo stick, feeding the crocodiles. We moved in close to take advantage of this unique photo opportunity – getting shots of crocodiles eating from about five feet away. Then we realized that maybe we needed a little more distance between us and the hungry reptiles – our waitress was baiting the crocs to get them to crawl out of the water! She succeeded splendidly, and we got up close and personal with the animals as they walked right by us, chasing the chicken-on-a-stick. After about 15 minutes of this entertainment, the crocodiles decided they were tired of it, and refused to jump at the food anymore, so we headed back to Cape Coast.

Day trip number two was Operation Eat Bratwurst. We had heard rumors that there was a German restaurant/hotel near Cape Coast, and the day after we went to Kakum, we set out to find it. Another short ride in van down the road, we saw a sign for the Biriwa Beach Resort, where we hopped out and climbed the short walk to the alleged paradise. What we found was a really great hotel and restaurant, indeed run by a German woman and her daughter. We learned later that the woman’s husband had been teaching at a nearby technical school for 30 years, and she had been running this hotel for most of that time. Her daughter, who had been raised there, spoke the local language fluently, to the point that I couldn’t distinguish it from that of another Ghanaian woman talking to her.

The veranda of the restaurant had a gorgeous view of the ocean, and Cailin and I enjoyed two sumptuous German dishes, loaded with great meat and sauerkraut. Afterward, we walked down to the rocky beach, where we eventually found a secluded cove where we spent a couple hours, returning just before the rising tide cut off our return route.

We returned once more to El Mina for our last night there, where the lady who cooks for the tourist-volunteers has prepared a nice goodbye meal for us – snails, red red, and salad. The red red, as always, was delicious, and the snails were a little rubbery and tasteless.

The next day, we would be heading back to Accra with our friend Dave, whose wife runs the NGO that recruits all the tourist-volunteers that we had been hanging out with, for our last couple of days in Ghana.

previous - next