Thursday, 17 April 2014

If you go down to the beach today…



With the boy away in Niger for 5 days and an empty weekend, empty house and the offer of a girls trip to the beach, I hopped on a trotro early on Saturday morning to visit one of Ghana’s main tourist attractions, Cape Coast.  While it is big for its Castle (one of the largest slave holding sites in the world, back in the day), I spent most of my weekend people watching on the beach.

The main beach attraction is the resident pig family!  Who knew, pigs seem to like the beach for the opportunities for foraging among the piles of litter, as well as taking a quick dip in the sea.  Well I enjoyed it, so I guess why not!


Second on the amusement list had to be the large number of American kids in town.  There is a cruise ship that does a ‘Semester at Sea’, which seemed to be large groups of young adults getting very drunk on cheap alcohol and playing drinking games that were probably only just acceptable in college bars.  Against the back drop of the cultural dancers at the bar, it was a total assault on eyes and ears.

Third on the list has to be the fishing boats battling their way out to sea.  The waves along this coast, and the subsequent under tow, and pretty big and getting one of these boats out there looks like a lot of work.  I am surprised we didn’t see any go over.  By late morning they were coming back with hauls of fish to be sold straight from the beach.


 Lastly part of the charm and beauty of Cape Coast is in the colonial buildings, now mostly run down and shabby, many painted in the bright colours of various mobile phone companies. 



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