Cape Coast Castle and Elmina

FANTASTIC weekend! Nicole arrived on Saturday after staying an extra day in Accra to wait for the luggage that the airline lost - not the way I’d like to start a trip, but she seemed unfazed. Kate, Tamsin, and I went to meet her in town and then the four of us headed up to do the guided tour of the Cape Coast Castle.

Brief history of the Castle: It is believed that a Swedish fort, built in 1653, was the beginning of the Cape Coast Castle. Cape Coast was captured by Britain in 1665 and the fort was expanded to be of similar size to the Dutch fort at Elmina (a nearby fishing town). Sometime between 1760 and 1795, the Castle was expanded again and became, more or less, the structure that still stands today. Cape Coast was founded as a small fishing village but grew into a hugely important trading port along the coast – it was at the heart of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the 1700s and would hold up to 1500 people in the dungeons.

The Castle was…odd. On the one hand, it provides an incredibly picturesque view with the whitewashed walls standing out against the bright blue water and colourful coastline of fishing boats. On the other hand, the dungeons are creepy and it’s disturbing to consider the horrors that occurred for so many years, in the very space that we walked through. There are separate male and female dungeons and you can see lines on the walls marking the levels that their excrement reached as they were held captive. Ironically, a church was built directly on top of these dungeons and the slaves would often hear the singing and praying from people above them. The part of the tour I found the most disturbing though was a so-called “condemned cell” – a small room with no ventilation in which thirty people would be packed and abandoned until they all suffocated. People would return three days later to pull out the dead bodies. I’m not entirely sure what to make of the Castle. It’s an odd (I can’t think of another word) feeling to stand in the exact spot where so much suffering occurred. Even while considering the horrors though, it’s hard not to appreciate the spectacular view – green trees, blue water J.

For Nicole’s first night we went to the nearby STC (bus) station where they have a big screen TV and bar outside. I love the atmosphere there! They were playing the fourth Harry Potter movie, but you couldn’t hear any sound from the movie because the 80s/90s pop music was so loud. For 10 000 cedis (just over US $1) you can get an absurdly large beer from the bar. It’s definitely the coolest gas station/bus stop I’ve ever been to!

On Sunday we went to Coconut Grove Beach Resort in Elmina. Elmina was stunning. I definitely want to go back there and explore the town at some point. The 15 minute drive there was amazing too – on one side of the road you can see white sand beaches, crashing waves, and palm trees while, on the other side, people live in tiny huts of mud and straw. Elmina appears to be a smaller version of Cape Coast and, though founded 700 years ago, it still remains a fairly small fishing village. The Coconut Grove Beach Resort was really pretty and very resort-y. We quite easily could have been sitting on a beach in Mexico. It was nice to get away for a day though (and for a shower!!).

All in all it was a relaxing weekend and Nicole seems to love it here already.