Cape Coast-er Ride

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This weekend a small group of six of us CIEE students decided to take a short trip to Cape Coast. There was a festival in Cape Coast on Saturday that we wanted to partake in. With our last minute plans the evening before, we booked rooms at a hotel approx 45 minutes outside Cape Coast via Trotro. We left Friday morning around 11 am and squished all six of us into a taxi and took it to Keneshe, a market place where we could connect up with a taxi/bus station. We ended up taking a three hour trotro ride to Cape Coast for only 3.5 GHC (approx. $2) and it dropped us off somewhere in the middle of Cape Coast. For the most part, we had zero idea of where we were, which made the whole trip that much better. We caught another trotro that took us to our hotel, which ended up being pretty much in the middle of no where, but was a great place.

We ate dinner at the small hotel and ended up meeting the owner, Adjwa, who was originally from Philadelphia and had moved to Ghana with her husband 10 years ago. She was a very nice and hospitable woman and told us how she came to Ghana to come home and how her husband had built the hotel. She gave us directions to a club downtown and so we headed out on an adventure to find a cool hang out place. We stumbled upon a beach resort called Oasis, which was pretty much an Obruni (the Twi word for foreigner) bar. We had fun hanging out on the beach and dancing, and we ended up meeting two very nice Nigerians who gave us their numbers so that we could call them the next day. They wanted to show us around the festival, which I am very thankful for now. Since it was Kyle’s birthday the next day, we decided to go to a different night club that our new friend Andrew took us to. We only stayed about 5 minutes because unfortunately Kyle’s phone was stolen and there were so many people that you couldn’t even move. We left and headed back to the hotel to rest for the next day’s adventure.

We got up early and ate a really great breakfast of pancakes, omelets and pineapple, then headed on our way into the city. We arrived and met up with Andrew and Emanuel, our friends we made the night before. They decided to take us down to the parade, which ended up being completely insane. Unlike the parades in the U.S., everyone was somehow apart of the show, which meant that the street was overcrowded with thousands of people. We ended up walking and dancing down the street with the parade. Our only problem was that we had to bring all of our stuff with us since we couldn’t go back to the hotel afterwards. This caused a fight to break out between Andrew and a guy trying to pickpocket our bags. It was very intense and the police ended up escorting the thief away. After that, we decided it would be best to stay in one place and enjoy the parade from the sidelines.

After the parade ended, we decided to get away from the hustle and bustle and Andrew led us up to an old fort that overlooked the entire city and ocean. To say the least, it was absolutely beautiful and I wish my pictures do it justice. After playing around the fort, we found a cheap bus to take us back home to Accra and then a Trotro to take us back to the University. Overall, it was a great first experience on our own (with the exception of the stolen phone) and we learned a lot about how to get around in Ghana and had a great time doing it.

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