Elmina and Cape Cost

This weekend we went to Elmina, which is to the west of Accra, near Cape Cost. We stayed at a hotel that a friend of Leslie's runs. One of the students that went on this program last year, Josh, actually stays at the hotel and manages the radio station for the town. It was cool to meet him and get some advice. We even got to listen to his radio program one evening. After arriving at the hotel, we visited Elmina Castle, which was originally build by the Portuguese in the 1400s. It was originally a fort used in the spice and gold trade, but was later used by the Dutch in the slave trade. The castle was incredibly eery and it was so terrible what happened there. I got chills walking through the gate of no return. After the castle we went back to the hotel to decompress. I went for a swim in the ocean. The next day we went for a canopy walk in the rain forest to the northeast of Elmina. We didn't see much wildlife, but just walking in the canopy was amazing, we were over 50 meters off the ground.  After walking the canopy we went for lunch a a restaurant that is surrounded by an crocodile pond. It was kind of frightening to be eating lunch with crocodiles swimming all around you. After that we headed to Global Mama a craft center in Elmina. The next day we headed home and prepared ourselves for work.