Sunday,July 7 Takoradi, Ghana

For some reason I have always been extraordinarily lucky on my travels. I make silly mistakes and somehow they end up working out swimmingly.
I left Accra on Thursday afternoon. I'd heard, from someone at my first hostel, that the air-conditioned VIP buses that connected major Ghanaian cities were not as good as reported in my Lonely Planet Guide. This person advised using the "private" buses instead. So when I looked for private buses in LP I found reference to same at a place called the Kanieshi Motor Park. This bus station was about a 45 minute walk from my hotel so I strapped on my big backpack and hoofed it to Kanieshi.
When I got there I found a large tro-tro camp with "private" tro-tro's headed for all parts of Ghana. It wasn't what I expected but I was tired from my walk and I knew I'd save money using the vans so I started asking everyone for directions to the tro-tro for Cape Coast, the city I had set as my next destination.

I don't think, to the day I write this, July 21, that I have yet met a true tourist during my travels. All these folks, at the fort at Cape Coast, are volunteers, working at orphanages in Ghana, spending their weekends traveling around the country.

After talking with about four people I found myself in a tight spot near the sidewalk outside the tro-tro park. A lady in the crowd told me she was on line for the bus to Cape Coast. I had arrived.
"You need a ticket," she told me calmly. After viewing my mystified visage she pointed in the general direction of a copse of people talking near the road. They were only six feed from me, but there were so many intervening folks (plus vendors selling foodstuffs) that I despaired of reaching the salesman before the next van left. There was one, partially loaded van in front of me to the left, the one that the lady intended to board.
I wasn't too anxious because I had lots of time. If I missed this van I could get the next, which, judging by the controlled chaos in front of me, wouldn't take long.
Then, suddenly people began rushing for the van. In a trice it was full. I still didn't have a ticket, but now I had space to talk to the salesman. Probably because I was obviously a tourist he immediately became solicitous and motioned for me to board the van. There was one open seat, I saw. But, quickly someone nudged ahead of me and filled it. My ability to pounce on an open seat was greatly impeded by the large backpack that I was trying to ferry into the bus.
Then the salesman intervened again and somehow got me into the bus. He closed the sliding door. It looked like I was on my way--feeling a little guilty that I got such primo treatment when all manner of Ghanaians waited behind me.
A moment later the sliding door opened again. This time the guy motioned for me to exit!
"Come with me," he said.
Quickly he opened the sliding door of the van in front of us and directed me to sit in the one open seat. As I awkwardly maneuvered myself into the seat I realized the van was fun of white people.
What I didn't know was that Ghana does have hundreds, perhaps thousands of European and American visitors. But they aren't tourists. I found that there are several charity organizations that arrange multi-week excursions where you sign on to work at orphanages and schools around the country. They pay around $500 for the privilege of working. The people in my van were part of this population. Given the weekend off they were in the process of going to Cape Coast.
Two of the leaders--if there were such among the group--were young men from Pleasanton. They seamlessly  adopted me into their group. They had already arranged accomodations at a nice hotel so I simply lodged at the same place. They then let me tag along as they visited all the tourist attractions around Cape Coast:  a fort left over from the slave trade; a crocodile-feeding place; a place to walk over some rope ladder-type things up in the trees; and, most deliciously, an animal exhibit crafted by an eccentric Dutchman and his wife. The Hollander regaled us with his life story, how he left Holland and tried to find someplace to settle away from home, how he had done badly in school but really wanted to work with animals, and how he came to set up a place to protect and propagate endangered species, especially monkeys. It was the most interesting thing I've done in Ghana so far.
And it never would have happened if I knew what I was doing and had taken the air-conditioned VIP bus that I might have taken.

We visited a national park where you could walk this rope ladder up in the trees. I'd done this same thing before, in Mengla, in Southern China. Apparently there are four of these spread throughout the world.

I still don't have wifi and haven't got the picture thing together yet, but I will soon go back and fill in photos where appropriate. I really do have some.

He (or she) is hard to see, but in that mirk is a crocodile, one of many at a restaurant we visited outside Cape Coast. An endless line of school children were bused to this place to feed the beasts and receive some sort of lecture.

We spent a couple wonderful hours at the home of an expatriot dutchman and his wife. His mission was to rescue wildlife and, some day, return their spawn to the wild. This monkey didn't like visitors and attempted to bite my head off at one point.

The fort at Cape Coast. I and my eleven new young friends spent a couple hours here learning about the slave trade.