Road Trip to Cape Coast

This weekend we made our first road trip out of Accra to the resort town of Cape Coast and the neighboring fishing village of Elmina.  This is a very lush green area of Ghana with picturesque villages and beaches.  The real adventure of the trip relates to the lack of road signs for highways and streets.  There were signs identifying most of the villages, which was the only clue.  

Getting to our hotel was a bit unnerving to say the least.  After driving through the small fishing village of Elmina, the paved roads with potholes came to an end.  As we followed the red dirt road with high vegetation on both sides, we asked ourselves, "could this be right?"  Then we saw a sign directing us to our hotel and made the poor assumption that we were almost there.  WRONG.  Just as we were about to turn around thinking that if there was a hotel out here, we weren't sure we would stay at it - we found a very lovely and new hotel on a beautiful beach with a hundred coconut trees.  It was delightful to sit by the pool or in the open air restaurant and enjoy the crashing of the waves.  At the restaurant we enjoyed wonderful fresh seafood.  The grouper, snapper, and lobster were outstanding and reasonably priced. 

It was interesting to see villages made up of huts which were mud bricks with grass roofs.  The traditional shape of the huts is round, but the newer ones are rectangular. We saw many Brahman cattle being herded along the seashore.  The fishing villages were fascinating; ladies were selling live crabs, shrimp, and fish of every variety including smoked fish.  We saw the mud brick ovens with screen racks on top used to smoke the fresh fish caught that day.   

The drive through the small fishing village of Elmina was filled with amazing sights, sounds, and smells that are difficult to describe.  All the homes were made of wood or mud bricks, a very few had block walls.  We were sharing the narrow road in Elmina with goats, chickens, pigs, sheep, and children.  All the boats were made from wood; some were nothing more than dugout canoes.  All go out to sea for fishing with nets.  As we drove along we happened upon two white-shirt and tie Elders teaching a man in front of his very simple home.  

We attended church with the Ola Ward in Cape Coast. The meeting was conducted in both English and Fante (the local dialect). The Bishop was making the announcements in Fante. And suddenly in English he said, "and would the white couple in the back stand up and announce yourselves," which we did. We were a little surprised but felt warmly welcomed.

Gregg saw what looked like someone holding a dead rat by the tail at the side of the road.  Guess what?  They were selling a dead rat!  Among bush meat delicacies is the highly favored Cane Rat also known here as a Grasscutter.  This particular man had caught the rats, cleaned and smoked them and was offering them for sale to passing motorists.  We were not tempted to buy one, but paid $1 to take a picture (we just had to have a remembrance of those teeth).  On arriving home we googled Grasscutter and found it is genus thryonomys syinderianus with numerous tasty recipes including Grasscutter stew.  Darn, I guess we missed our chance.