Ghana

When we arrived in Ghana, Jason and I hired a taxi who took us around to different landmarks in Accra. At one of our first stops I met the nicest woman ever. We talked for a while about her life in Ghana, her children, and her job. She offered to host Jason and I later that week for a barbecue, but unfortunately we were leaving too soon.



Jason bballed it up with some local kids


Village in Accra:


President's house


We had arrived on a Sunday, so many of the popular places in Accra were closed. Long story short, we eventually found a casino and spent the rest of the day there...

The next day we had a SAS trip to Kakum National Park and to Elmina Castle. They were some great landmarks, but out of the twelve hours we were on the trip, eight were on a small, tiny bus. This took away a little bit.

This a is a forest canopy bridge. Kakum has one of the four canopy walkways in the entire world. This one consisted of seven bridges, over 40 meters above the ground. I thought it was so much fun, Jason on the other hand embarrassingly yelled "Mommy!" more than once.







After we left Kakum National Park, we went to see Elmina Castle. Elmina Castle is one of the oldest slave forts in the world. It was built by the dutch and between 2000-3000 slaves would be imprisoned here before loading on ships. It was a very somber and depressing visit.


This church, on the inside of the fort, was built directly on top of all the dungeons.



For the next two days in Ghana, I spent walking around Accra. I did some fun shopping and met some interesting people. However, the lack of a lot of pictures is because I just didn't really get to see that much. Ghana is still in infant stages of development and has minimal infrastructure making it very difficult to get around. Additionally, the landmarks are very far apart, some more than 8 hours by bus. Only having four days there made it impossible to see a lot. I would not recommend Ghana for independent travelers, as it is just not prepared for tourists. I am glad I went though to get a glimpse of "proper" Africa. The poverty is astounding. It is arguably the worst we have seen on the voyage.

One of the highlights though, was the coolest bar I have ever been to. It was very out of place, right in the middle of an impoverished neighborhood. It was six floors of cool dance floors, lounges, and bars. Quite a fun last night.



Sorry for the short post! I'm in Brazil now though, next stop: AMAZON!