Awesome weekend at Cape Coast and Axim!

I had a very nice and relaxing long weekend on the road to the beautiful Cape Coast on Thursday! We took a fast van from the bus junction to the house in Elmina, which is practically Cape Coast, and enjoyed a delicious green curry vegetable stew from one of the best cooks in Ghana! It was absolutely delicious! On Friday morning I went to Kakum National Park, and went on the canopy walk through the rain forest! The 7 Canopies are 120 feet up, and sway as you walk! It was scary but so much fun! The rain forest was not nearly as green as the pacific northwest's forests, but it is the dry season at the moment. But it was still beautiful to see the undeveloped palm trees and shrubbery!! Then when I got back into Cape Coast City, I walked around for a while. I like Accra much better, living wise. Cape Coast is so quiet! It is a nice vacation place, and the buildings are old world colonial which gives the city a special vibe and beauty, it just doesn't have the the liveliness as Accra. It is so funny to see goats and chicken roaming about and crossing the road, it makes me smile haha. If a goat crossed the street in Seattle, the entire city would shut down! In Cape Coast I took a tour through the castle/slave holding place, the same place Obama went to! As bad as it sounds, the castle was so architecturally beautiful! I hate saying that because the Governor at the time held Africans captive and killed them there! It was so creepy and heart breaking to stand in the dungeons that people were chained to, it gave me the chills to even imagine it. My jaw dropped more and more as the tour guide went from dungeon to dungeon and explained which rooms were used for certain procedures. The worst room, in my opinion, was the room where they chained the slaves to the walls, they had no light, food, water, or even oxygen, and they just let the slaves die. They didn't shoot them, they just let them suffer for 3+ days. It was intense. But the next day, I got up at 5am to take the tro tro to Axim! It took three hours, on a crowded van with 18+ people. Not a bus, but a van haha. It was a lot of fun actually! The fare is incredibly cheap! But it's funny, because you see all different kinds of people. A couple were going to a funeral, some looked professional, and some had a bucket of fish haha. It is truly exciting and fairly efficient! You just stand at the side of the road and make the hand gesture to where you want to go, and then if it's the right tro tro, you get on it! 3 hours later, you're at your final destination! So, Axim was GORGEOUS! There weren't mass developed hotels and buildings, just palm tree lined pristine beaches! It was wonderful! I'm so burnt though...hahaha, I will tan soon hopefully! After my stay there, we caught two tro tros to get us back to Accra, 6 and a half hours later, I was home! I feel like I have been on vacation for weeks! Everything is great here! I love it all! Ghana is awesome!