Africa Day Getaway Weekend

Africa Day was May 25th, so we took advantage of the three day weekend to go celebrate Africa and hang out at the beach...(we were helping chaperone the "Anti-Prom" - the brainstorm of one of Coop's friends who was not interested in the Junior/Senior Prom Friday night, considering the impracticality of finding a prom dress/tuxedo, and all the attendant trappings in a third world country. We were pleasantly surprised that the kids understood the dilemma at all, and happy to hang out at the beach with them as an alternative.)

We headed to Elmina, about 2.5 hours after you clear Accra (which took 45 minutes!) and the next town after Cape Coast. Our destination was the Coconut Grove Beach Resort therein (or, as it said on some of the lounge cushions- Coconut Groove Beach Resort). ;-)

Elmina has a 'castle' too- remember that is the name for the huge British built whitewashed stone buildings they put up as forts and "holding tanks" for Africans being sold into slavery. Having been to the castle at Cape Coast, we decided to forego the dubious pleasure of seeing another.

You'll just have to imagine Cooper's deadpan delivery as he expressed a desire to NOT visit the Elmina Castle by playing tour guide...

"This is where we lived, ate, went to church, and sold human beings for profit. Here is the dungeon we kept them in without food or light, here is the door where they were loaded into smelly ships like cord wood. We hope you enjoyed your tour."

If you didn't know its purpose and history, though, the Elmina Castle would seem a very nice place, I suppose...



About a mile down the road is the Coconut Grove. This is the view from our room...

























and this is the restaurant...


















...and after dinner we sat here and just watched the ocean and relaxed...




The hotel is pretty nice- albeit with the usual Ghanaian touches (foam mattresses, line dried towels, showers without curtains or doors, etc.), but when you are hanging out at the beach with nothing you have to do, it's swell.

There was a village just outside the hotel grounds, and I apologise for the quality of this picture, but I include it because it's a good (if blurry) representation of the village. Those are mud houses, with palm thatch roofs.



Many of the people in Elmina are fishermen as evidenced by this inlet near the castle...











This is just a part of the "fleet" that moors in this inlet. Most of them were out fishing when I took the picture.






Here's a shot of an almost finished boat (they are carved from a single tree trunk and then painted bright colors)...





















Lots of the village homes had fences around them, and all of them were made (logically) from palm fronds.











Coop has seen Ghanaians making these fences and he says they just do it- making it look so easy and simple.


We know it's not.










As we headed back to Accra, this was our parting scenery along the roadside...




Pretty good weekend. Pretty nice country.