Ghana Part 1

This is my Ghana blog. It will be two parts, the following is part one!
So the original plan in Ghana was to do a Habitat for Humanity build the second day and figure something out for the other three we had there. My group in communications class had somewhat planned the trip out and I was excited for it. The plan was to do a canopy walk the first day with a group of about 7 and then come back to the ship and wake up for Habitat. Well the day before Ghana the group decided that there wasn’t enough time the first day, and the canopy walk was moved to day two. I was now faced with the moral dilemma of either missing the canopy walk with my friends or missing Habitat, so I sold my Habitat ticket and made plans to go the third day instead.
The first day arrived and we were cleared to leave the ship sometime just after 10 am if I recall correctly. We headed into Accra, the capital, which was an hour away from our port, Tema. We went to the Golden Tulip, a hotel that four of our friends were staying in and ate lunch there while we planned out the day. We finished up lunch at about two and split into two groups. One went to the mall, the other went to the market. I am not about to go to an overpriced mall in Ghana, so I went with Lindsay, Deirdre and JulieAnne and hit up the market instead. This market was huge and overwhelming. It was called the Wood Market by our cab driver and had a bunch of craft stuff as well as clothing and other apparel. The people there were relentless trying to get you to buy. They were far more persistent than other countries and without fail tried to guilt you into giving them money. If you bought from someone else they would accuse you of not supporting them and it really got heavy at times. We spent somewhere between 3 and 4 hours there and I left having spent probably way too much money. I got some good stuff though and some gifts for home. After touching base with the other group who was now back at the hotel we headed that way.
We met up at their hotel room where another 5 or so SASers had shown up to join us and hung out there until 7:30 when we headed down to dinner. I wasn’t particularly hungry but I ordered soup and sat there and talked with people. Trevor and Jose left for a while to hit up the casino connected to the hotel and both walked in proclaiming that they were up well over $200 US each on slot machines. We wrapped up dinner and I went to try my luck as well. I was playing blackjack with Graham, a friend who had arrived late and we could not lose. I played for over an hour and busted a grand total of once. I started with $30 US, played 5 dollars a hand, and walked out with $155. I was quite ecstatic. We went back to the room and met up with the others who didn’t go gamble and talked about what to do. The group who had come late wanted to go out, but our group was a little overwhelmed by the amount of people so we let them head out. I told JulieAnne I would attempt to teach her blackjack so we headed back down to the casino to try our luck again (worst idea ever). We were playing with my winnings and not doing too bad. We were about even for an hour or two and even up as much as another 50 bucks. Things took a gradual turn for the worst though and it ended up with me losing pretty much all of my winnings when everyone else at the table left. We ended up sitting there for honestly like 3 hours though and I had such a good time. My mom has taught me well that if you gamble you only go with money that you have already planned to lose and I did just that. I have no regrets about it, we had fun. The four of us who went to the market headed back to the ship because we didn’t want to spend the money on the hotel, and made plans to return early the next day for our canopy tour.
JulieAnne and I met up with Lori, another girl who wanted to join us that day and we headed out on the 8 am shuttle back to Accra. Unfortunately the shuttle which we paid for didn’t feel like leaving till 8:45 so that was frustrating, but we eventually got going. We were fortunate enough to have a good driver who let us off the bus right by the hotel so we didn’t have to get a cab from the city center so that was appreciated. We met up with the four who stayed the night there and the seven of us headed off to Kakum National Park for a canopy walk! The park was supposed to be two hours away and turned out to be closer to four, but we eventually made it. We paid our entrance fee and set off on a hike up to the rope bridges in the jungle. It was incredibly hot and we were all dripping with sweat within 30 seconds of starting to walk. Despite that though it was so cool to be in the rainforest. I wanted to go to the Amazon in Brazil really badly but couldn’t splurge on the $1500 SAS wanted to go, so this $30 excursion substituted okay in my book. The canopy walk was AWESOME. It was a series of 7 rope bridges that stretched almost a half of a mile I believe. They crossed between trees over rainforest and the drop was well over 100 feet in some places. We had all kinds of fun, finished up there, ate lunch, and hopped in the car to head to Cape Coast.
Cape Coast was the site of the Elmina Slave Castle, one of the places where they gathered slaves from Africa to hold captive and send to Brazil and America. We made it there at about 5:30 but found out that it was closed, so we were only able to look on the outside. Instead we enjoyed some live music at a restaurant nearby and played with the kids who were there selling stuff. The people there were even more relentless in their pursuits to take our money than the market folks from the day before and it really started to frustrate me. No one wanted to just talk to you as another human being and everyone was offended if you didn’t buy anything from them. I kind of wandered around with a frown on my face and didn’t buy a thing. We eventually left an hour later or so and made our way back to Tema to meet the ship. Some people wanted to grab a bite to eat at the pool bar then go out but I was pretty beat so I just crashed. Before going to bed I ran into Jay though and confirmed plans to go to Habitat the next morning.