The last two days of Ghana were spent exploring the rainforests of Kakum National Park, visiting Cape Coast Castle and dancing to Traditional Ghanaian Music by a local band.
Kakum National Park is the rainforest home to many nocturnal animals such as baboons and monkeys. Unfortunately, I was not able to see any baboons or wild monkeys but I did get to see a baby monkey that was about three months old. The baby monkey lived with one of the locals that lived nearby to the National Park. She was so active and climbed over everything and everyone scavenging for snacks in the bags and pockets of some of us visitors.
Our tour guide in Kakum took us up into the canopy level of the rainforest by hike and a lot of stair climbing! Along the way, he pointed out different insects scurrying around on the rainforest floor, such as centipedes and millipedes. The view as we scaled up towards the canopy level continued to grow in beauty and sunlight. It was such an exciting hike up to the Canopy Walkways!
The view from the Canopy Walkways was so exquisite all the while trying to balance myself on the narrow canopy walkway board! The Kakum National Park Canopy Walkways were built in the late 1900s by four Canadian explorers and a couple Ghanaian locals to admire and study the canopy level of the rainforest. It has since then become a very popular tourist destination and they also opened up a treehouse overnight trip to invite visitors to spend the night in the rainforest and watch as it comes alive with its abundance of nocturnal creatures.
After visiting Kakum, my group went on to tour the Cape Coast Castle along the coast of western Ghana. Cape Coast Castle was one of the main holding hubs in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade routes. We were able to walk through the male and female slave dungeons where captives were held anywhere from two weeks to three months before being transported to other countries for auctioning. We walked through the ‘Door of no return’ and felt the intense and anxious emotions of uncertainty that captives, I imagine, would have felt as they were shackled and shuffled onto ships never to return to their homelands ever again. It was such a fascinating and humbling experience to get to learn of the rough history of Ghana during the time of slave trading.
On the last day of my stay in Ghana, my field class was able to enjoy the harmonious and contagious music of a local Ghanaian group! We were able to get our hands on the native instruments and learn a few songs from the group as we all danced along to the foot-tapping beats. The music group also taught our group a few traditional Ghanaian dances to go along with our newly-learned drumming solos.
Overall, Ghana did not disappoint! The livelihood and happiness of the Ghanaian people and culture is sure to have you smiling from ear-to-ear the entirety of your visit!
Jaiden Lynn 🙂
Journeys with Jaiden 