The process of me getting to Ghana was a journey to say the least- having to get a visa & being asked by Delta to repurchase my flight when I arrived to the airport–more on that later.
The first day and a half I spent in Cape Coast which is about 2 hours away from Accra. First we visited Cape Coast Castle & Elimina Castle, the two most popular slave castles. It was a chilling experience to say the least. I actual stepped foot in a place where millions of slaves were held over time. Hundreds cramped in small rooms at a time shackled to each other, having to sit and sleep in waste, getting sick, etc… I don’t have to go into all the visuals. I have been on a journey to find out more about where we came from and learn more about the diaspora. Unfortunately I somehow deleted all of my images and video from my camera from that day so I was super bummed. Luckily I did do some video on my phone and posted on IG.
Cape Coast
"#CapeCoast Castle! This was one of the castles slaves were held before they were shipped off to the Americas and the West Indies. So much history and it..."
It was an unforgettable experience and gave me some ideas of next places to travel. I learned so much that of course is not in our history books. I encourage everyone to visit the slave castles and learn more about how we got here.
The next day we headed to Kakum National Park for a dope canopy walk. It was waaayyy up and pretty scary actually. Set in the rainforest of Cape Coast area, it was a cool backdrop and I got a ton of exercise.
After that we headed to Kumasi for 3 nights to explore the capital of the Ashanti region. We went to the old palace, learned so many stories about their kingdom and some cool legends. Driving on the way we passed by several villages and every place pretty much sold something- pretty much anything you could think of especially fresh fruit and even fresh meat. You could get some great food and even see someone pounding fufu right outside. I definitely picked up fruit and a ton of water of course lol.
One thing I was definitely surprised about was that Ghana was so mountainous AND that it was very tropical. With palm trees everywhere and tropical fruits, it reminded me of Costa Rica actually. I didn’t have those expectations going in.
**This is just a snippet of the experiences Alexis had while in Ghana so make sure you hop over to her site LexiWithTheCurls for the whole post and the follow up posts in Lexi's Ghana series! **