2 weeks down!

Day by day this trip just keeps on getting better :)
This was technically the first week of classes but due to our time zone Ghanaian Maybe Time (GMT) few if any courses actually held lectures this week -- taking this into account, many international students decided to take advantage of the extra week off before classes actually begin to travel a bit and get out of the hostel for a few days. Originally there were plans to leave Tuesday night and head up to the norther region of Ghana to Tamale and Mole National Park (with the intention of seeing elephants, etc.) but that idea was discarded when we realized that the chances of seeing wildlife during the rainy season is slim-and-none. That trip will be much more worthwhile in November or December when the natural watering holes begin to dry out. A few students from my program chose instead, to go to the Volta region to our east and spend a few days there. I, however, chose to spend a few days in Cape Coast with a group of German students and a frenchman.
The seven of us headed out on Wednesday morning - and due to the madness that is public transportation in this country - arrived in Cape Coast (which is about a 2.5 hour drive from Accra) by bus about 7 hours after we left campus. We stopped at a nearby hotel on the beach for dinner and drinks before heading 10 kilometers out of town to the hostel we had chosen to stay at. Turns out, it really is a small world after all! While enjoying our drinks, resting from a nearly full day of travel, and waiting an extremely long time for our food we met 3 Americans sitting at the table next to us -- they all met at the Colorado School of Mines! Crazy enough, Ben had been working in the gold mines further west of Cape Coast (and knew of the mines where Dave Moragues' company works) and as it turns out - his girlfriend Sarah had been on the same flight to Accra from D.C. with me 2 weeks ago! We both felt as though the other looked familiar but didn't realize until later in the evening that we had been sitting one row in front of the other across the isle from each other. Their friend Duncan has been in various countries around Africa for the last 2 years and is planning to continue the same for at least another year. We exchanged numbers, paid our tab, and said goodnight.
The group from Legon caught 2 cabs to our destination for the next couple nights "Hans Cottage Botel". It's a 'botel' because almost the entire area is on stilts above a crocodile pond! At dinner a local Ghanaian student from University of Ghana, Legon joined up with us so when we got to the hostel there were 8 of us assigned to one room (sounded a little tight to me) - there were 12 beds, 8 of which were made up with sheets and pillowcases on the pillows. We had a private "washroom" and were located right next to the pool!
Thursday we decided to tour one of the local slave castles El Mina, afterwhich we stopped at a nearby village on the beach were we smelled the locals smoking the fish they had caught that morning and we were soon swarmed by local children. We took some pictures with the kids and headed back to Cape Coast for some lunch. We began wandering along the road closest to the beach where we ran into Ben & Sarah from the night before who invited us back to their beach hotel for some ultimate frisbee on the beach later. We wandered some more and eventually made it to their hotel, bought some drinks and hung out on the beach until they returned. While waiting we were able to watch several different rugby training groups and a family of pigs munching on the garbage not too far from where we were sitting. Before long Duncan had joined us with his frisbee which soon attracted many local children (and foreign "obruni" children) to toss the disc around with us. Unfortunately this didn't last as long as it could have because our group had hired a couple taxis for the day and our time was running out so we headed back to the hostel and hit the pool to lose the sand we literally had all over us. A few of the guys had invited the Coloradans to join us for the evening and by the time we got out of the pool and dried off a bit, they were at Hans Cottage ready to order dinner and have some drinks.
The next morning our group (fondly referred to now as the "C.C. Crew" aka Cape Coast Crew) paid for our room from the previous 2 nights and headed off to Kakum National Park where we did the canopy walk which ranges anywhere between 20-40 meters off the forest floor below. It is said to give you a "monkey's-eye view" of the area, however the chances of actually seeing wildlife are severely decreased by the fact that there are constantly large groups of tourists (including small children) wandering through making entirely too much noise. We were able to hang back far enough from our tour group so that it was much more quiet as we crossed the 7 rope bridges from platform to platform and took in the wonderful scenery around us. We wandered back out to the main road and caught a tro-tro back to Hans Cottage to pick up our luggage from reception on our way back into Cape Coast to hop on yet another tro-tro to make the 2.5 hour trip back to Accra (which turned out to be a poor choice on a Friday night). We grabbed some food from street vendors to help get us through until we were back in Legon for the night and squeezed into a tro-tro with all our luggage on our laps. Traffic in Accra was terrible! When we finally made it to Circle station it took at least an hour to get a cab for 4 of us to start heading to Legon and it took at least 2 hours once we were in the cab! This cab ride was definitely not for the weak - it was a sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat, nail-biting, adrenaline rush kind of ride and I doubt we will ever attempt major travel on Fridays ever again. Never-the-less we survived and made it safely back to campus last night in time to decide whether to go out on the town or not but eventually everyone admitted defeat from another long day of travelling and we had a lazy rest of a rainy day.
Lots more rain this morning, but hopefully it will stay away for the rest of our evening. Today is the international student Welcome Durbar beginning at 4pm which is in about 2.5 hours and a major after party downtown. I think tomorrow will be more of a lazy day - more likely than not filled by the task of handwashing more laundry before classes actually begin on Monday (or so I'm told).
I think that's all for now, quite a big update this time and uploading the pictures isn't working quite right now so that will be soon to come as well :)