Morning in Cape Coast

On the way into the centre of Cape Coast, we stopped off at a omlette stand and got the same old Ghanaian smile from the lady, nonexistent, before carrying on to have a look at some forts from days gone by. Hundreds of years ago Cape Coast was at the forefront of the transatlantic slave trade, although it was very important many years before to the Portuguese and then Dutch who were first in control of the Gold Coast (original name for Ghana because of all the gold that came from the area). The Europeans heard legends about the gold mines on the West coast of Africa from the Arabs that brought it across the Sahara. As gold became used for currencies, the Europeans set off in ships in search of the source of the precious metal; so they could get it themselves rather than paying more via the Arabs. History lesson over!

We first visited Fort Victoria, and paid one cedi for the silent guide to 'show us the way', of which there was only one! The fort was a small lookout, whitewashed with cannons looking out in all directions. You could see why it was used though - the views were fantastic, all the way down the coast to Elmina and across all of the nearby coastline.

The next one we visited was up an even steeper hill in the middle of town, and was called Fort William. This one was free to get to, and while me and Kez explored inside (shouting hello etc), a woman and her young son came down from the three storey watchtower and offered to show us around. The lads were dying from the heat underneath the bigger building, that turned out to double as a lighthouse for the port. There were about 40 soldiers stationed in this fort; which again gave excellent views for miles around. The lady had apparently lived there for 25 years, so we joked that she knew all of the gossip in Cape Coast, and we tipped her after the brief tour.

To get out of the heat for a little while we went to change up the rest of our travellers cheques, which took a fair old while queueing up, but we weren't complaining as there were seats and air con in the Barclay's. This took about an hour for all of us, but I wanted to get rid of mine as the Euro rate had gone down since I'd bought them. After that we stopped off in an English book shop (at last!) and had some dubious shakes and banana cakes from a healthy-eating NGO by the castle.

We then explored down the small beach, next to the giant white castle, right on the coast. Walking barefoot in the sand, we saw men pulling huge pirogues (big wooden fishing boats) into the palm tree shade up the beach; children fishing with small lines right on the shore, most of which I tripped over; and even some men carving a pirogue out of a massive piece of tree! Man points! The beach went a bit sour towards the end, with deserted buildings and huge piles of black and rotting litter being the only things you could see. We even saw a couple of pigs rooting about and having a wash in the river of waste that flowed down.

So we decided to turn back and see Cape Coast Castle.