Ankwanda, Elmina, and Cape Coast

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Ankwanda

The ordinary seaside town has nothing to offer tourists other than the fabulous Beach House hotel, owned by Ghanaians living abroad. The bus driver missed our stop and dropped us off 12km away at 5pm. We hadn’t gotten any exercise all day, so we walked to Ankwanda. About half was on a dirt road toward the sea and the other half on the beach at sunset. We arrived just after dark. It really was Peggy's idea to walk, though probably only to impress me.

Beach House Ankwanda towers over the town and the view from the delicious rooftop restaurant illustrates the contrast between two worlds - the locals and the tourists. But the town does benefit through its staff - local kids who climb the palms to get coconuts for guests (are we complicit in child labor?) and taxis to and from the main road.

We met the American caretaker a couple of days later, who explained that it was originally built as a retirement home for a Ghanaian living abroad who grew up in Ankwanda but was eventually converted into a hotel by his daughter. It’s only 30m from the water and palm trees line the sandy beach. If you walk east along the beach there is nothing but small fishing villages but most of the resorts are to the west behind a hideous sea defense (see photo). We really lucked out finding this place and decided to spend 4 nights there to explore the area.

Elmina

About 7km west of Ankwanda is Elmina, a local mispronunciation of either the Portuguese al mina, meaning (gold) mine, or Arabic miinaa for harbor. I found that interesting, obviously. But we made the mistake of walking there. We expected a nice beach walk similar to what is west of Ankwanda but the ‘sea defense’ wall began about a km from our hotel, meaning no beach access and instead a squalid wasteland of rubble, pigs, and rotting fishing camps the rest of the way. We eventually climbed the wall and walked along it to avoid a garbage dump and a woman peeing next to it. It’s not the people’s fault that they’re poor and our having to see that scene pales in comparison to their misery, but we nonetheless decided to take taxis back to our hotel.

Elmina is mainly known for the first Portuguese and later Dutch castle built initially for the gold trade and eventually for the slave trade. Entry for foreigners is relatively expensive by Ghanian standards (80 cedi/7 USD) but includes a pretty good 45-minute to 1-hour tour, which takes visitors through horrific male and female slave dungeons, the governor’s quarters where he raped the slaves, the execution by starvation room, and the exit to the ships to take survivors to the New World. As you might expect, the mood wasn’t very different than touring a Nazi death camp.

Being the only white guy on the tour, I kept my mouth shut, but later an Australian we’d seen in Wli joined and was very inquisitive about the design of the castle, since it was changed to accommodate the shift from gold to slaves, with tighter doorways to avoid a riot, strong iron bars under the arches to prevent escape, and a hole in the dungeon ceiling to dump food and water through.

The unspeakable horrors of the dungeons spoke for themselves, so my questions would have been more conceptual and provocative, like, “Why do many of the taxis and fishing boats in town don British flags when the British also traded slaves in the area?” and “Why would Ghanaians so fervently embrace the religion of the colonists who enslaved Africans and justified it through said religion?” Which is why I kept my mouth shut.

Cape Coast

The small city of Cape Coast also has a castle that was used for the slave trade, this one run by the British. It was easy to take shared taxis and tro-tros to and from the city; I think we waited for under a minute overall.

There’s actually a small tourist center in Cape Coast with gift shops, hostels, and higher-end stores. As a result there are a few street kids begging for money.
Baobab House, a nonprofit that sells gifts and serves tasty vegan food, recommends not giving them money but instead buying them a meal, which the organization would then match. We bought a lot of gifts at Global Mamas, a cultural center focused on fair trade products. There was still a bit of sludge smell, but nothing like Accra.

Go West

Since the sea defense and resorts that cater more to wealthy Ghanaians are to the east toward Elmina, every evening at low tide we walked west on the beach. There is plenty of trash on the lip but walking next to the sand and water was lovely. The waves and undertow were far too rough to go swimming but the violent, foamy waves were relaxing to watch. On our last night I walked/ran 6k all the way to a prominent rocky point just beyond Ampenyi and found myself at Ko-Sa Beach Resort where I saw the first backpackers of the entire trip playing volleyball. It looked like another nice option for foreign tourists and the adjacent town had two youth soccer games on the flat, wide beach. But when I stood there for a minute to cool down and watch the waves crashing into the rocks, a security guard started to approach me, so I left. I think it was some church group.

Apparently there’s a lull in Ghana’s rainy season in late June, which is one reason we decided to visit there. We’d managed to avoid it until our walk back that night. A storm came through and the wind and rain were needly and cold, making for a memorable close to our adventure.

There are more photos below.

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Photos

View from the castle pulpit.
For some reason this was more disquieting than the dungeons were.

Condemned Room
Slaves who fought back were put in this room to starve to death.

The Dusk Walk
Peggy was thrilled to walk there with her pack on (It was her idea.).

Sea Defense
This barrier begins about a km from the Beach House and runs all the way to Elmina. It’s likely that resort owners got the government to build it, but it ruins the beach and the view. It must have taken a lot of money and manpower to build it, and Ghana seems to have bigger infrastructure problems to deal with.

Evicted
It’s sad to see these makeshift shacks near Elmina Castle.

Narrow passage to ship
This exit was rebuilt from the original castle so only one person could pass at a time.

Comments

[hopetours]

amazing
altogether i can say you had a good stay here...from Wli to Elmina and about those questions, you dared not ask...they burst me up because we ask those exact questions. thanks for coming to experience Ghana and sharing our story