I was less than thrilled when my alarm went off at 0630. All I wanted to do was sleep for another four hours. I dragged myself out of bed and showered quickly. I packed up all my stuff into my backpack quickly and headed upstairs to breakfast to meet Bea and Victor. Bea was already there, looking put together and content. I looked like I needed days of sleep. When Victor came up a few minutes later he looked the same way. I had a few pieces of fruit to hold me over until lunch. I threw a few little boxes of cereal into my backpack for later.
We got off the ship and found our driver as soon as we did. Mr. Nicholas. He would be taking us to Kakum National Park to hike through it and walk through the canopy. We all introduced ourselves and hopped into his SUV. Within minutes we were on the road and the music quickly changed from Ghanaian hip hop to American country. He had unwrapped a set of discs of it, looking like he’d gotten it just for us. Bea and I stifled back giggles. None of us listen to country. I’m so glad that’s what people around the world think of American music. Haha. So sad. The CD played on repeat for the entire four and a half hour drive to Kakum National Park.
Within minutes of people in the car I fell asleep, as did Bea. Our driver kept talking to Victor randomly up front so didn’t get to sleep much. I felt so much better rested by the time we got to the National Park. The car was hot and sticky by the time we got there and we were ready to get out and stretch our legs.
Mr. Nicholas stopped at a little gatehouse and paid to enter. It was a dirt road that led up to a few wooden buildings surrounded by lush greenery. There were butterflies everywhere. It was beautiful. We got out and went to a desk to pay. They told us to sit and relax and they’d let us know when our tour was. I didn’t know it was a tour, I just thought we hiked through. There were a few other SASers there. I saw Chelsea and a few of the other Miami girls. We sat around with Mr. Nicholas as we waited for our tour to start. An SAS trip showed up a half hour later to join us. He told us that he had 5 children. He looked to be in his late 40’s or early 50’s. We asked about his kids and he told us that the oldest was 37! That’s so old! How was he that young?! And his youngest was 16. That’s quite the range of ages. He looked to Bea and me and asked us if we were married, as if this were a standard question. We both laughed and said no. I guess in Ghana this isn’t such a ridiculous question, but it wasn’t something that we were used to.
Shelia, Chi Chi, Kareem, and Anissa appeared, too. Shelia’s from Ghana and they were all staying with her family. Her dad was taking them around to all these sights. That must have been so nice for her and for all of them. We waited almost an hour for our tour to start. Mr. Nicholas produced cold water for us from somewhere. We were waited under an open-air wooden building. It was a small restaurant. We had no idea what time our tour would start so we resisted every urge to order food.
We were given tags to wear that said we were “Non-Ghanaian Students.” I’m sure that somehow translated to “has to pay more money.” Then we were divided up into a few groups and taken off on the hike through the jungle. It was so pretty and so green. It was also ridiculously humid and hot. I was sweating so much already. Like dripping sweat. It was disgusting. But I have learned to embrace sweat. That is what traveling to all these countries has taught me: embrace the sweat and do not be embarrassed by it. What a great mentality to have. Haha.
We hiked up some rock-like stairs through the trees. We all talked and tried to not lose our breaths as we trekked onward. After a solid walk up we came to a wooden structure. We climbed up on to the second level of it where the canopy walk started. We took tons of pictures of each other getting onto it and in every possible position. I somehow ended up behind Shelia and in front of Kareem, this was a funny place to be. Shelia was petrified of heights and Kareem thought it was hilarious. It took us forever to move from one bridge to another. I wouldn’t have even thought twice about how high we were up in the canopy except that Shelia kept saying it and stopping. It got me thinking and then thinking about how much it would hurt if it broke and we all fell. Not even just hurt, we’d probably die. We were up like a hundred something feet up in the trees on this little bridge in the canopy. I think the canopy bridges were up 40 meters from the rainforest floor.
They didn’t seem that far up at first because there were so many trees and bushes below that came up. But the bridges were rickety. They were only about a foot across. It was like a metal ladder with wooden planks put on top of them. They were rope nets around the sides so you couldn’t fall down. There were 7 different bridges that we walked across that spanned about 350 meters. Supposedly there were forest elephants throughout the forest, but we didn’t see any. We only saw birds and bugs and small things like that.
After each bridge we would end at a wooden platform that was built high up around a tree. It was so cool. We lost the rest of the group that was ahead of us because we were moving so slowly with Shelia. When we finished up on the last bridge we couldn’t see them at all and continued along what we thought was the pathway. We ended up back down by the wooden structure where the bridges started. There were a few people who worked there who told us we were going the wrong way and pointed us back a different way. We backtracked and headed in that direction. By now we were sweating even more. So disgusting. We stopped a few times for pictures and so that Kareem could climb up into the trees like a monkey. Luckily the pathway was easy to follow and we ended up back at the start of the tour. Bea and Victor and everyone else were waiting there for us.
We hung out for a few minutes and decided that it was past lunchtime. And since our day revolves around eating we grabbed some food there before heading off for our next adventure. We got sandwiches at the little restaurant. I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich, because I didn’t want anything that would have to be cooked and would be hot. That’s how hot I was. I was chugging water left and right at this point.
It took a little while for our food to come out, which was surprising considering what we ordered. We ate quickly and paid our bill. Mr. Nicholas was waiting for us by the car. We got in and the country music started up again. He quickly hit stop. We got really excited for a minute. He told Victor to pull out a CD from the glove compartment. I could see that it was the second volume of the country set. It was a greatest hits collection. Bea could hardly contain herself when she heard more country music start up. So ridiculous.
It took us a little while to get to Elmina Castle. We had to backtrack out of the rainforest area back to where there was somewhat more civilization. We had been talking about Ghanaian chocolate earlier and had been asking where we could get some. At one point, our driver pulled into a gas station and told Bea to go in and get some. She was confused, but just went with it and went inside. She came back out with a little thing of cookies. That was the only chocolate they had. Ghana is known for its chocolate, it’s supposed to be delicious, but it wasn’t as easy to find as we had been told.
We continued on our drive. I don’t think any of us slept on the way there. The air conditioning was a little better than earlier. Thank God. We drove through little villages and shacks, then areas of lush greenery. Everywhere there were people carrying baskets and heavy objects on their heads. I don’t know how they did this. It was incredible. They did it as if it was nothing. I can’t even imagine the neck muscles you’d have to have to do this. They have such good posture. A lot of the women doing this were carrying babies on their backs as well. So much weight and yet they looked incredibly poised.
After an hour or so we ended up down by the coast, Cape Coast. It was a small town where Elmina Castle was located. It was right on the water. It huge was huge and white and black, and we could see it from a mile away. It was up on a little bit of a hill. It was formerly called St. George’s Castle and was built by the Portuguese in 1482. It was the first European structure built in Sub-Saharan Africa.
It was a slave castle with dungeons. The Portuguese enslaved Ghanaians and kept them here and shipped them off to from here, hence its proximity to the ocean. As soon as we stepped out of the car we were bombarded by a bunch of young men trying to sell us bracelets and other jewelry. A guy named James started talking to me. He asked where I was from in America and asked my name. He asked how I spelled my name and I spelled it out for him. He wrote it down on a scrap of paper and showed it to me asking if it was correct. I wasn’t really sure why he was asking, but did it anyways. He talked to me the whole way up to the castle. He was really nice and wasn’t trying to push me to buy anything, at least yet.
We paid a few dollars to get in and hopped in on one of the tours with Kareem and Shelia and their group. We were led around the castle and told all about the different parts of it. There were a few dungeons, one for the men and one for the women. There was very little light that was let in, and we were in there during the sunniest part of the day. There was a small opening in the ceiling from the kitchen so that they could drop food down into it. It was really sad. And they would keep hundreds of people in these dungeons. I can’t believe it. There was a cannonball on the ground that we could try and pick up. This was how they kept the women from escaping and doing work. Even the guys could barely move it. And if they could, it wasn’t fast. So there was no real escaping with that on you.
We were also told that before this became a historical sight, it had been used as a police training area. There were two cement walls that had metal railings up them. They were sharply angled and were used to climbing up. Kareem, Victor, and a few other boys took a try at it. Kareem, being ridiculous at climbing, was up and down within seconds. It probably went up about 25 feet. I was not about to try it for fear of falling off. My hands were all sweaty and covered in bug spray. I definitely would have slipped right off.
It was really interesting to hear all about this. Bea was talking about how she had seen the other side of this process with the history in Puerto Rico. We got to go to the second level and see where people actually lived in the castle. The view from the third level was beautiful looking out over the beach and coastline. There were a few large walls that surrounded the castle. They told us that the water used to come up closer to the castle so that they couldn’t escape over most of the sides. Most couldn’t swim, so they’d drown. The beaches were white and sandy. On the other side it overlooked the town, which consisted of little houses and buildings and water ran through part of it and there were tons of boats. Off to one side we could see a game of soccer being played.
There was a little gift shop that they brought us to and an art gallery inside and another gift shop. They tried really hard to sell stuff to us, but it wasn’t happening. No one really had money or wanted to spend it here. Plus it was too hot to want to do anything extra like shop. And that concluded our tour. In one of the rooms at the end we peeked in to see hundreds of bats chilling on the ceiling. As we looked in and talked, this disturbed them and they flew around in a frenzy. I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid of bats, but this definitely creeped me out.
I went off to find the bathroom before we got back into the car for another four and a half hour drive back to Tema. It was outside of the castle itself, but still on the premises. It was off to the side in a creepy little area that was deserted. It was disgusting. No one was around. I ran in and ran out. It freaked me out too much to be there alone.
I caught up with Mr. Nicholas and Bea and Victor as we headed back down to the car. We were again bombarded by the boys. At first they were too distracted by Victor who was ahead of the rest of us. Then James noticed me and came up and started talking to me. He remembered my name and asked me if I remembered his. I said of course and said James. He got really excited and gave me a big huge, almost surprised I had remembered it. He handed me a shell that had writing on it. It said: “To my American Sis. Stephanie. Welcome to Ghana. Your Friend James.” Or something to that degree. It was cute. He told me that it was a fundraiser for school and showed me a typed up piece of paper describing it. Then there was a column for names and a column for donations. I wasn’t sure if this was a legit thing or not, but I gave him 10 centis anyways for it. He wanted more. I told him I couldn’t afford more. It was 10 or nothing. He was then happy to have it and handed it over to me and hugged me again. Then a guy selling bracelets came up to me and asked if I wanted one and tried to push it. I said no I didn’t have any more money. Then he saw that I had a bottle of sunblock on the side of my bag and asked if he could have it. I looked down at it and said sure. I had a few bottles on the ship and I barely use it anyways. He was ecstatic. Then I was able to get into the car. Victor had given another guy 40 centis for the shell and Bea had given another 2. Haha. Oh bargaining.
Almost as soon as I got back into the car I fell asleep. For some reason being in the heat and humidity was making me exhausted. I woke up a few times through the few hour car ride to see Bea and Victor both passed out. About an hour away from the ship, Mr. Nicholas pulled over at an ATM for us so we could get some more money to pay him at the end. Then we continued on. I fell back to sleep. I woke up when we got stuck in traffic about 20 minutes from the ship. It was at a tollbooth. We were stuck there for awhile. It was horrible traffic and we could see a SAS bus coming back, too. The same country CD had been playing on repeat. There were probably only 10 songs on it and we knew all the words by the time we got back to the ship. Wonderful.
We didn’t get back until almost 2000. We tried paying our guy 100 centis rather than $100 USD. He caught on quickly and yelled at us that this was wrong. So we had to pay $100 USD, which sucked. That was an expensive day. It should have been cheaper, but there was really no other way of getting there.
We got back on the ship and ran into a lot of people. Most weren’t planning on going back out for the night because Accra was so far away and Ghana isn’t the safest place to be out at night. The buses that ran from the ship to Accra only ran until midnight. But the reliability of them was unknown after the fiascos of yesterday.
We decided not to go out. I was planning on doing another far away trip the next day and leaving early for it, so I wasn’t about to go out and be out late. Plus I was exhausted. We went up to the 7th deck and got sandwiches from the bar. I had a delicious roast beef sandwich. We all hung out. There were a ton of people up there, since everyone had missed dinner. After an hour or so we all headed off in our separate directions for the night.
I showered and got ready for bed and was so excited to be in bed before 2300. I fell asleep almost immediately. Only to be woken up by my roommate an hour later. Pissed would not even begin to describe my mood. She burst in and turned the light on. Sick. I sat up and grunted at her. She looked at me for a minute then turned it back off and turned on the bathroom light. I fell back to sleep. 20 minutes later I was woken up again by her boyfriend knocking on the door. Sick. They giggled and talked loudly while I tried to sleep.
I was beyond annoyed. I turned up my headphones and fell back to sleep. Only to be woken up an hour later. Furious is the only word that comes to mind. I’m so mad at her about this whole night. Literally, the most annoyed I’ve ever been with anyone on this voyage. I will say no more.
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