{"id":46,"date":"2008-02-25T16:30:47","date_gmt":"2008-02-25T16:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/?p=46"},"modified":"2015-05-18T18:56:44","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T18:56:44","slug":"kakum-national-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/2008\/02\/25\/kakum-national-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye Via Kakum National Forest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"group_wave\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Well, today was the day of tourism fun! We got up early, so we could be at Kakum National Forest right when it opened at 8am.\u00a0 We figured we\u2019d get a taxi, it\u2019d cost us like 10 Ghana Cedi, and that would be that. Well, turns out, since the taxis know that they have the tourists cornered out here, they charge 30 ghana cedi for the trip!! Highway robbery.\u00a0 We make a deal with the driver to take us to Kakum, wait for us, and then take us to Elmina after that, all for 35 ghana cedi.\u00a0 If for nothing else than convenience and ease of mind, it was mostly worth it\u2026.<\/p>\n

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Kakum was awesome! It is this national forest, which is obviously all rainforest. The canopy walk was built in 1994 by some people from Vancouver BC as a tourist attraction.\u00a0 It stands about 20meters above the forest floor, and is a series of planks of wood connected between wood platforms built around tree trunks, all suspended with cables and ropes. Not for the faint of heart, that\u2019s for sure! We ended up doing it with our own guide and a couple from Holland, which was a ton of fun. Encountered another Ghanian who wanted to know if we were married\u2026par for the course! We got some excellent pictures too.<\/p>\n

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We then headed south to the coast, where we visited the Elmina castle. It was built by the Portugese, then captured by the Dutch, then captured by the British, then given over to the Ghanians in 1957, the year they got their independence from the British.\u00a0 The history is absoutely flooring, and the conditions these people were made to live in were totally inhumane to say the least.\u00a0 We got a tour of the castle, and got to learn about the history, which made the experience even better.\u00a0 Plus, being on the coast, it\u2019s just totally different here.\u00a0 There\u2019s a breeze (praise the Lord!), and it smells like salt water, and there are fishing boats (hand-carved) everywhere.\u00a0 Again, we have some great pictures.<\/p>\n

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Then we caught a taxi over to the Cape Coast castle, which was more of the same (not that it lessens the experience, I just don\u2019 t have much additional to say about it), situated in a little bit different of a setting.\u00a0 We got to see the famous \u201cDoor of No Return\u201d in that castle, and go through it and back into the castle again, which is pretty symbolic. Again, more great pictures, and more tales of just absolute torture that these people endured.\u00a0 We learned today that the Ghanians that have more european last names are named thus because they are descendents of babies born to slaves who were raped by the colonists.\u00a0 Those mulattos think of themselves as superior to the purely African people, and there\u2019s a little bit of a hierarchy because of it.\u00a0 So interesting, I never knew that.\u00a0 We learned a bunch more about women in slavery, and different destinies for different women, depending on the mercy of the men, but I won\u2019t write about it, for those of you who don\u2019t want to read about it. Maybe you.<\/p>\n

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We found out our next STC bus (oh the adventure) to Accra leaves at 1pm tomorrow.\u00a0 We have to be at the airport by 930pm for our 1130pm flight to London.\u00a0 You would think that was plenty of time, but as our experiences have gone thus far, we\u2019re not so sure. It was either 1pm or 4am, and we figured it\u2019d be better on our general senses of well being not to have pulled essentially an all-nighter before embarking on our London adventure! Seeing as we\u2019re both people who don\u2019t do well emotionally on little sleep, I\u2019m thinking we were right! So you all can cross your fingers and pray that we don\u2019t get delayed enough tomorrow that we miss our flight!! I\u2019m sure that missing a flight out of Africa would be an adventure, but it\u2019s not one that either of us is excited about embarking upon at this point\u2026 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s to a relaxing evening (we\u2019re going to eat at the restaurant at our botel, and there\u2019s supposed to be this massive bird arrival to a tree right outside the open air restaurant), and a successful trip to Accra tomorrow.\u00a0 Love to all of you!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Well, today was the day of tourism fun! We got up early, so we could be at Kakum National […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/crystalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}