Ghana never fails to make an impression on me. What a beautiful coastline, and a fantastic break!

The 18 hour bus journey, which had no less than 7 Nigerian movies blaring back to back way into the night along the bumpy roads, no more than three pee stops in daylight at smelly and unsightly urinals (not on your nelly am I risking those things at night!), and one hugely built policeman equip with serious muscles and an even more serious gun, was less exhausting than I was expecting (the nice reclining seats and air con did help I have to admit...), and we arrived in Accra at 1am.

What was more exhaustng than I was expecting, was Accra itself. Seeing as the policeman had swiflty fallen in love with Hannah no sooner than she had taken her seat, and then asked me, the senior sister (grr!) for her hand in marriage no sooner than I had taken mine, we decided to flutter our eyelashes at him in order to enlist his help in getting a taxi to the hotel. His response, bearing in mind that this guy is a strapping policeman, with a shed load of power, and not forgetting his gun...(!), was, simply "A taxi? You'll get mugged!" Oh dear, not a good start.

Nonetheless, Hannah's charm of course wooed him over, and soon we were marched into a taxi with stern orders to make sure we arrived safely at our destination, and for us to let him know when he arrived (a quick ply for him to get hold of Hannahs Ghanaian mobile number me thinks hehe!). We arrived at a rather dodgy looking hotel, snook inside past the sleeping dogs and the sleeping old men on the bench outside, and met the quirky young man working on reception. Well, he was sleeping in the general reception area so he I suppose could be classed as staff! Tiptoeing down the quiet corridor to our room, echoes of a nearby Christian spiritual gatherng in the throes of devotion, shrieking in tongues, high pitched rants and raves bouncing off the quiet walls and threatening to keep us up all night, or what was left of it. And then... welcome to the prison room. To be fair I've slept in worse, but it was still a bit of a let down, grey room, teeny window looking out onto a wall, a bug spotted in the bed in the morning...good morning holidays!!!

After that I have to say things did pick up a lot...driven mainly by my desire for some decent food...I had heard rumours of bountiful fresh salads, chocolate croissants, and cafe's with all kinds of cakes and sweet stuff lurking in this city, and after 4 months of deprivation I was definitel ready for my fix!! We met up with Leela (volunteer friend) for a late breakfast, then managed to navigate our way across town to a salad bar where I had the most scrumptious salad!! (I never thought I'd get so excited about a bit of lettuce, oh how things chage on a diet of rice and beans!).

The city was the sprawling mess that I remembered; hot, dusty, jam-packed full of cars and people, busses, bikes, 4x4's, lorrys, trucks, tro-tro's...you name it, it's there, squeezed onto the cahotic roads, weaving in and out, beeping, hollering, honking their way through the busy streams of traffic. The one things I notice is that although there is pretty much everything else on the roads here, there are no animals! In most developing countries that I've been to you'll see at least a monkey or two, if not a camel a cow or an elephant wandering in the road. But not here. Poor as some areas are here (seen in the sloppy slum like shanty towns splurging over the sides of the roads and the beggars and the people selling in their wonky wooden shacks by the side of the road spawled with graffitti as a note from the local government "Remove now, by order") there is also organisation (road names!), order (traffic lights, policemen, sellers in the road walking by as if they have professionalised their trade and you will now come to them rather than them dangling all their wares in your face through the window and climbing on the bonnet to force you to buy (as they do in India)), and wealth in the form of huge posh blocks of flats, hotels, and even now a shopping mall to rival some I've seen in London.

We had both a briliant time there (scoffing yummy oh-my-god-I-haven't-seen-a-salad/pastry/cake/fruit smoothie-for-sooooooooo-long food in the plush aircon of a nice cafe), and a chaotically stressful time out in the heat of the manic streets too.

One piece of advice...don't ever get in a car in Acra unless you are totally, utterly sure that the driver really does know where he is going. This is not a city where you want to be getting lost! We attempted to take a taxi to the bus station but the taxi man clearly had no idea where it was, and we spent a whole hour just driving around whilst he asked people, all of whom ponted him in completely opposite directions. I tried to have a row with him about it even though he had no idea what I'm talking about because he doesn't speak a drop of English, then after what felt like another hot, sweaty, stressful, anxiety riddden hour we discovered that somehow he had actually somehow got us on the right tracks to our destination! Follow this with a chaotic weave through numerous bus stations, Ghanaian man in front hiking Hannah's bag over his head, dashing through the crowds, me and Hannah completely overwhelmed by the chaos and tailing behind almost getting run over by tro-tros, being bumped by the hundreds of people milling about, fending off mariage proposals for Hannah, tripping up the wonky stairs, slipping down them, stepping between mucky puddles and cow-pat, babies and cooking pots, deafened by the rev of old engines and the honking of horns, gassed by the horrendous fumes that plump ou of those things, distracted by the HISSSSSS and TSK! TSK! of sellers and sent dizzy by the number of things whizzing by on peoples heads, and we were ready to meltdown!

But once on the tro-tro, with fan-ice in hand and thoughts of the beach ahead, happiness soon returned and we were on our way to Korobite!

It's a great place, we stayed in a real backackers type place, and it was heaps of fun. The beach was absolutely gorgeous. Not in the Tunisian or Gili Islands sense,but in a very West African one. White sands, deep grey-green palm trees leaning out towards the sea, a fuzz of misty sea-spray floating in the air, fishing boats washing in and out on the crashing waves, white fuzz sloshing up as the waves come tumbing down. The undertow is too strong to swim here, but sitting watching the sun go down with cocktail in hand was enough :). Our room was kitted out with an open-air shower, so we could take cold showers inthe hot day underneath the banana leaves, or at night underneath the stars, and we could hear the sea rolling u and down the beach, morning noon and night, so we were very happy indeed!

A couple of days later we moved on to Cape Coast, again a bit o a hairy jourey but this time helped along greatly with the help of some very helpful Ghanaians who managed to wangle us from our rickety tro-tro onto a plush air conditioned coach (all whilst they were practically still moving I might add!). We initially got quite a spooky vibe from the place, influenced by the particularly spooky hotel we found ourselves staying in, and the fact that when we went out for diner to what is supposedly the most popular place in town we discovered it was practically pitch black, and pretty much completely empty. It did look out right over the rocks and crashing waves though, was right next to the huge imposing castle, and it had a pirate-themed vibe, so we just sat and prenetded we were n Pirates of teh Carribbean whilst we ate our dinner of pizza and curry looking out to sea!

The following day we woke up to miserable drizzly rain, but luckily it soon cleared and we had a lovely afternoon strolling around the city, taking in it's sea front atmosphere and it's historic feel, sipping ginger tea and eating banana cake in a cute little hostel (continuing to be driven by food of course!) and gazing up at the huge castle with it's sturdy fort and horrific past. Wandering around the castle later in the day just before sunset, we were struck by the history of the place, and how Ghana's past is so carefully and paifully entwined with our own. It was really moving to see the dungeons, the dark dank airless spaces were thousands of men, women and children were kept after being captured to be sold into slavery.

Walking through the 'door of no return' was really moving, I cannot imagine how the people walking through there in history, chains at their feet, some women with babies in their bellies, families, relatives, brothers and sisters on other boats, in other dungeons, some already on the oter side, standing on auction blocks waiting for the right price, never to be found again, must have felt knowing realising this was their fate. The castle is a beautiful place, a place for reflection and connection with our past, a place for attempting to understand, and for reminding the people who visit to ensure that humanity never again commits such an atrocity.

Standing on the fort looking out to sea you can see for miles, and as Hannah pointed out, there is nothing further south in the ocean until the antartic, so the sense of vastness of the sea, Africa, and the world is really impressive. Next we took a short journey down to Elmina, where we stayed in a gorgous little hotel right on the fishing port and with a window looking out onto all the action, It was the perfet place for soaking up the historical vibe of the castle above, and being carried along on the hub-bub of activity below. Long skinny boats, made of wood, painted here and there in bright colours, decorated with flags of many different and decked with teams of men in the same colour shorts and t-shirst (looked a bit like sports kits), heaps of fluffy blue and white fishing nets, large buckets of crabs, and yellow jerry cans of fuel, manouvered in and out of the harbour, a gazzilion boats at once, not one crashing into another (Ghanain order and choas all at the same tie again!), heading to the market shores to offload their wares and return to sea before nightfall. They fish every day except for Tuesday, which is considered a holy day and a day when the Gods will replenish the sea with more fish. From what we heard the people here live in harmony with the sea, and cherish it as their cradle and life support.

The great thing about Elmina was that we got to have a bit of history wandering about the castle, a bit of local life, wandering aimlessly around town and chating to curious locals on our way, and a bit of pure luscious relaxtion and SWIMMING (!!!!) at a nearby luxury hotel. Perfect! We topped it off with meal in their plush restaurat by the sea, and ended our holiday as happy bunnies :-).

It has been amazing to share the whole thing with Hannah, we have had a lot of fun, and I've learnt so much about Ghana it just keeps on impressing me with it's West African adventures that happen almost on a daily basis.

The journey back was long, and me and Hannah did a 'who can have the worst journey / longest delay' competition to see who would reach 'home' first, her with two delayed flights and the stress of lost luggage, me with a bus 'leaving at 2' yet not even arrived in the station 5 hours later at 7pm... what can I say, life in Ghana!

With love from Emma and Hannah happy holidays,

Xx

(P.s. not my pic, the real thing is far busier! Just a temp one till I can get one of ours up)