Tuesday we slept in until around 9 and called our cab driver from the previous day. Diana worked out a fare with him that he would take us to several places for one fare; essentially we rented him as a driver for the day. First we went to Kakum nature reserve. After paying about 15 cedes (Diana paid 2, everything is more expensive for foriegners) we hiked up about 10 minutes to the canopy level of the forest. We walked on a canopy walk that had 7 suspended walkways with trees at each stop. There were no harnesses or anything but instead there was rope netting on each side so you wouldn't fall.
Supposedly you could see lots of animals on the nature reserve, but there was a group of about 50 Ghanaian hair dressers right behind us that were yelling and screaming to each other, so any wildlife that was around would have been quite scared away. It was still really cool though.
After the canopy walk, we decided we didn’t want to buy any food there, and that there wasn’t a good chance of seeing animals if we did a different nature walk (the other option was one on the ground), so we left.
On our way out of the nature reserve we saw a sign for a monkey rehabilitation center, so we had the cab driver pull up to the gate and honk. A Dutch man came out and we asked if he was open and how much, and he said it was free but asked we give 7 cedes each for food for the animals. The taxi drove in and we got out, and the guys assistant gave us a tour. There were several monkeys, 6 crocodiles, a lot of turtles, 2 pythons, and some rodents that looked like raccoons and deer.
We are cute and very sleepy. You are bright.
I am not comfortable being on this ledge.
Lots of different turtles, not the best place to display them.
Do not like! Please turn me over!!
The Dutch guy really didn’t want us taking pictures of the animals in the cages, and didn’t want to be called a zoo even though when I asked if they had any sick animals or animals they were planning to release his assistant said no. It seemed a bit sketchy. The guy was very nice and did let us take pictures of his pet monkey that he had chained to a tree,
and I think his point was to teach the locals that monkeys and some of the other wildlife were good for more than just food.
I asked him why he came from the Netherlands to start a monkey reserve in Ghana, and he said he hates what his government is doing and he’s been here about 8 years.
He also says that he doesn’t have mosquito nets at all and gets malaria about once a month, which is no big deal to him. He was interesting, to say the least.
After we left the monkey place we stopped for lunch at a restaurant near the university in cape coast, and then headed to Elmina Castle around 4. They were technically closed when we got there but they let us in and started a new tour for us. It was similar to Cape Coast Castle but older, and Dutch instead of British. There is a church in the middle of the castle, on top of the slave dungeons. If there was ever an example of religion being in the wrong, we were standing on it.
After seeing the castle we went back to the hotel and the drama began. We had told the hotel the previous day that we were students and would like a cheaper room for the second night. So Tuesday night Diana talked to a different person who said they didn’t have a cheaper room but they have a dormitory. Diana was mad that they didn’t tell us about it the first night, because the dorm was 9 cedes a night per person instead of 24 per person. So she said we would like to switch rooms, and we decided to shower in our old room where we had our own bathroom, and then switch rooms. Diana told them I wasn’t in the room but when I came back we would eat and switch rooms. So we sat down to eat around 8:30… and didn’t get our food until after 10. Our waiter took our order and didn’t turn it into the kitchen, and then preceded to not check on us for more than an hour. In the meantime 2 Ghanaian guys joined us at our table for what wound up being a crazy conversation of one of them hitting on Diana, and ticking her off instead of picking her up, and the other trying to explain why he wants to run for office in Ghana. His reasoning was that he could do good and still make money off the top of federal projects, and we were trying to point out that its people like that that screw up politics. He was also trying to explain American government to us, saying that Obama didn’t really make decisions as president of the US, there were 4 men that did instead. But he couldn’t tell us the names of any of the men, so it sounded really ridiculous.
After eating we went to change rooms and they wanted us to wait until the next day, but we both complained about how long dinner had taken and they let us switch. After moving our stuff into the dorm, which we had to ourselves, we were about to turn off the lights when I saw a rat. And screeched. Diana was already half asleep so I just climbed onto the top bunk and attempted to sleep. I saw what I thought were more in the shadows after I turned off the lights, and I heard them rustling a plastic bag. So I put in earplugs and hoped that the mosquito net would also keep out the rats. I maybe fell asleep at 2; I kept jumping thinking one was going to crawl on me. It was a good day overall, just could have ended better is all :P
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