Day 53

Cape Coast Trip Day 1

This morning I woke up at 5 and started packing as Cassie went to take her shower. I packed almost all of my belongings into one backpack and purse making sure to include all the things needed to renew my visa. We left for Agona and only waited a couple minutes there before Jackie, Lauren, and King arrived. We got on a pretty comfortable tro tro and left right away. I listened to music the whole way there until we arrived in Kumasi. King helped us navigate to the banks while only a few men grabbed at us this time. We went to the bank next to Barclays and I pulled out some money. King had a taxi waiting for us but we all had to go use the bathroom real quick. We got out to the taxi and as he was driving away he said we owe him 5 cedi instead of the 4 he told us because he had to wait 30 minutes for us. It was barely 15 minutes so we told him we weren’t going to do that. We had to drive through this checkpoint where a police officer that told us we couldn’t have more than 5 in the car. Our driver said something to him and he just waved us on. In the bigger cities the police are stricter about the number of passengers. We arrived at the bus station and there were about 6 seats left so we paid 6 cedi each for them and hopped on the bus. I was separated from the girls at the front of the bus while they sat in the very back almost 30 rows away. I put my headphones in and tried to fall asleep but I was so uncomfortable. The metro mass transit buses are very cheap but also very uncomfortable. Our travel days are nothing to look forward here and we hate them every single time. After about 2 ½ hours of driving we stopped at a random place. We all got out with our bags and stretched our legs. There were ladies selling bread, drinks, crackers, and mangos. Jackie bought half a loaf of bread for us to share and eat. We got back on the bus and I tried to sleep again but that wasn’t going to happen. I got my book out and began reading. It was hilarious trying to highlight on the bus. I would start to highlight a word and then we would hit a bump and I would just cross out the word. Some looked like I was trying to draw an EKG under the word. Cassie was sick sitting in the back of the bus so we switched seats. The back was actually really fun. We were thrown out of our seats a few times and made highlighting even more of a challenge. Our tailbones felt pretty bruised after the trip but it was quite the adventure. I ended up finishing my forever long book on the bus. Once we had arrived at the last top the taxi men were arguing over who could take us. They started to take King’s bag demanding that we get into his taxi to go to the hotel. One of the taxi drivers said it’s a very short walk and that we don’t need a taxi but he’ll take us for free instead. We didn’t want to squish into another taxi and since it was a short distance we opted to walk. Once we had arrived at the hotel we were pleasantly surprised at how much of a hotel-y feeling it had. The patio outside had wicker chairs and there was a reception desk with very nice men. They were watching the movie UP when we walked in. We got 2 rooms for a total of 50 cedi a night. We walked up to our rooms and we had 2 queen beds in our room where King only had one. We were all very tired and hungry which made us very cranky. Jackie and Cassie pulled out the Bradt guide and started reading everything about Cape Coast again. King was taking forever to get ready so we went to the rooftop and looked out at the ocean. We started walking to dinner and passed a couple other Obrunis on the street and they didn’t even wave. We were so offended and weirded out that they didn’t even recognize that we were there. We arrived at The Oasis for dinner. It is an outside restaurant with 3 gazebos over big wooden tables and chairs. There was a stage with 10 dancers or so dancing to drums. It was the perfect beach restaurant. I almost fell asleep waiting for the food to come. I got up and walked out to the beach and felt so relaxed and grateful for this trip. As I was walking back to our table a man wanted to come over and talk to me but I saw them bringing the food out so I stopped talking to him and went over to eat my absolutely delicious chicken pizza. This pizza would have been good in America. It had lots of veggies and cheese all over the pizza. We left the restaurant and walked around Cape Coast for a really long time. We were walking down on of the streets and saw a huge group of kids dancing azonto to some really loud music. We joined in with them for about 10 minutes before they started getting in trouble for dancing with us. We were causing too much of a commotion so the older kids were hitting the younger ones telling them to move out of the street. Lauren, Cassie, and I stayed with the kids and danced while Lauren and King went to look for a place to watch the Soccer game. We walked around some more and went to the shops right by the beach. There we met a really nice guy named Casim. He told us how his dad died at 14 so he started his shop at 15. He had mainly wooden masks and figurines in there that were so cheap and cool looking. The masks were only 5-10 cedi. We talked for a bit and then started to leave his shop. He told us before we left to pick out a bracelet that he’ll give to us for free because he like the way we talked to him. We were so taken aback at the generosity of this stranger. He said he didn’t even care if we didn’t come back and buy anything from him he just liked the way we treated him. We went to a couple other shops but the shop owners were a little too high to help us out then. It was dark outside so we just went to find Lauren and King. We went to this place that had the Czech vs. Portugal game on their very nice flat screen TV. We paid 50 pesewa to get in. We were literally the only girls in there surrounded by at least 100 other men sitting on benches under a big tent. Most of the men had a beer or two in them although I never actually saw any alcohol I could smell it in the air. We were really watching the game for Christiana Ronaldo, we were very excited when he got face time. We came in only a few minutes before half time so we missed most of the game but the score was still 0-0. With 75 minutes into the game Portugal got a goal. We all jumped up and screamed with the men in the place. The people behind us told us to sit down so they could see the replay of the shot. The 90 minutes was up but 4 minutes were added to the clock. Portugal ended up winning which made everybody pretty excited. We got back to the hotel and unbraided Jackie’s hair for more than 2 hours. She had her hair braided with fake hair into it and needed help taking out the hair. We watched Friends while unbraiding it and at first had a really good time but we were so exhausted from traveling that it quickly became annoying to do them. We unbraided in silence for about an hour until we were finally done. Jackie’s hair was out of control and it looked like she crimped her hair. While Jackie took a bucket shower, because the water wasn’t running, we all wrote in our journals and read scriptures. It was around midnight so we all fell asleep almost instantly. We’re not used to being up that late here! Despite the bad travel day I am so excited to be in Cape Coast and spending 4 more great days here!

XOXO

Ama