From Cape Coast and on our way back to Accra, we took a detour north to Kakum National Park.
This tropical forest park was established in 1931 as a reserve and designated a national park in 1992. It is currently on a waitlist to become designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
What makes this park unique was that it was established at the initiative of locals and not by Ghana’s State Department of Wildlife.
It is also one of only 3 locations in Africa that features a canopy walkway. This makes it a good bookend to the canopy walkway we took at the beginning of our roadtrip with Confidence back in Lagos.
The canopy walkway costs 100 Ghanian cedis to climb and is an impressive 350 meters/1,150 ft long that connects 7 tree tops.
Wear appropriate footwear here (we even saw someone slightly struggle on heels at the one in Lagos!) because along the canopy walkway, one of Sandy’s flip-flop straps broke. She then asked to steal one of my socks so she could walk the rest of the way without getting a splinter.
I gotta say, it feels very uneven when one of your feet has a sock and the other doesn’t.
After an hour at the park and sadly seeing no other wildlife (even its famed crocodiles), we then drove south 40 miles north of Cape Coast to the Assin Manso Ancestral River Site aka “The Last Bath” where one of the largest slave markets took place:
Here captured Africans were corralled and allowed to recuperate after their long journeys by foot from their villages.
This was also where enslaved people would be branded and take their last bath in the waters of their native land.
When it was time to leave for Cape Coast, they were sorted for the strong to continue onwards to the castles on Cape Coast, while the unimaginable happened here: the weaker ones would be left behind, chained to trees, and left to die.
After taking it all this madness in, we then cut across a shortcut dirt path for an hour to have a late lunch at La Femme before continuing onwards to return to Accra.
- At time of posting in Kakum National Park, it was 32 °C - Humidity: 73% | Wind Speed: 11km/hr | Cloud Cover: overcast, rainy, humid, hot