Cape Coast

25 JANUARY 2023

Today I travelled in a comfortable minibus with air conditioning to Cape Coast, a town on the coast to the west of Accra.

I’d booked to stay at Baobab Guesthouse, where all profits go to a Children’s Foundation which runs a vocational training college for young adults. I loved the atmosphere in this cozy place and there was a vegan restaurant - yeh… first experience in Africa. C150,000 per night

It was then on to more sobering things - as this area was once the largest slave trading centre in W Africa. A visit to the castle takes you through the dungeons where enslaved Africans were kept before being shipped to the Americas. The very informative tour finished at the gate of no return where we saw the end of the tunnel through which the slaves would go to be loaded onto the ships.

There is now a gate of return notice on the outside of this exit point to mark where the ashes of two former slaves were repatriated in 2019 as part of an annual remembrance ceremony.

Today, Cape Coast is a fishing centre with a relaxed town centre clustered around some crumbling colonial buildings.