KMJ travels

Today was the first day of the GHET retreat, but that just meant they would be locked up in a meeting room all day.  Therefore, I managed to get myself on the sightseeing plan our CFO, Alex, had in mind, which was going to be way more fun than sitting around the hotel all day.  Our plan was to drive West to Cape Coast, about 3 hours, to visit the Kakum National Park and Elmina Castle - Ron was also along for the ride.

The Kakum National Park is home to a tree-top Canopy walk, which was built by USAID in the late 90’s to promote eco-tourism.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakum_National_Park

The canopy walk consists of seven rope and plank bridges, suspended amongst big giant trees.  You head across  the top of the rainforest as the bridge gently wobbles, looking down at the vegetation below.  We hoped to also glimpse some of the elephants that live below, but no such luck - they are good at hiding.  It was a really fun little hike and adventure.

After lunch at a nearby hotel, our next stop was the Elmina Castle, the primary junction point for the Atlantic slave trade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmina_Castle  This was a heavy visit, filled with lots of horrific tales contrasted with a beautiful setting.  Our tour guide was great, providing lots of useful information as we walked through the place, but man was it hot.  Alex was definitely regretting his decision to wear jeans today.

Once we were done, we had to endure another long car ride home.  While I have definitely enjoyed the opportunity to scour so much of the country, I am defintely starting to tire of the long car rides - I’m scared to calculate how much of this trip I’ve actually spent in a car/van.  Speaking of which, here’s what our motorcade looked like yesterday, 4 vans and 1 SUV - not conspicuous at all:

Back at the hotel I couldn’t wait to shower as it had been a hot sweaty day.  Just as I shampooed up, I ran out of water.  This has been happening sporadically to other folks but I had so far avoided it.  It seems Accra is having a major water shortage, so the hotel has water being delivered constantly, but they sometimes just can’t keep up with the demand.  Tonight I was in conundrum because I was short and time and what water I did have was hot, not cold.  As I waited a couple minutes minutes pondering my options, the cold water slowly trickled back in and I was able to finish rinsing off in time to help Shelby herd everyone into the vans for dinner.

Since they had been cooped up all day in a meeting room, we went next door to the Palm Royal hotel’s Ghanaian Village, a tropical outdoor spot reminiscent of Hawaii.  They seemed to have a good time, and Girindre even showed off his dance moves twice, first with Candy and then with Kirsten.  After dinner, we set-up shop in the “office” as usual to ready ourselves for the next day.