Riding the Lion to Keta

After realizing my professor had cancelled Friday's class and that I hadn't taken a weekend off with the Carleton girls in a month, I joined in an adventure to wherever they wanted to go. That turned out to be a town on the Western coast of Ghana not very far from the Togolese border known as Keta.

So on Friday morning, myself, Adrienne, Lisa, Meghan, and honorary Canadians Katherine and Lucas hopped on a bitchin' tro-tro called the Lion of Judah and headed West. I even got to ride shotgun. Sweet.

After a switchover at Ashaiman, we rode all the way West to the Keta Peninsula. Basically, it's a long strip of land bordered on the North by the Keta Lagoon and to the South by the Atlantic Ocean. The towns on the way - Segbu and Woe, were some of the most picturesque, idyllic villages I had ever seen. Certainly retirement living-material. It seems like all people do there is grow tomatoes in fields irrigated by the lagoon.

We went up to the Northern edge of the land bridge and went to the ruins at Fort Prinzenstein, built by the Dutch and Norwegians for the slave trade and now half-eaten by the sea. Compared to the castles at Cape Coast and Elmina, it's not much to see, but the son of a local chief gave us a detailed tour for a decent rate. Afterwards, we went to the Keta Beach Guesthouse, which was not quite on the beach, but we went there anyways for a little pre-sunset water fun. The compound itself was decent, as were our rooms, but the service at the restaurant left a lot to be desired. (Lucas' meal took 2 hours to get to him) It's clear that Ghanaian service ideals are much different from North America's. I was not keen on tipping.

We drank a fair bit, went to bed early and got up before 6 to see the sunrise on the beach. The fishermen were out in full force to bring in the nets on the beach, singing songs as they pulled their ropes in. The strange thing was that for all the work that goes into casting and drawing in a giant net like that (many people, perhaps over an hour in total?), they only get maybe a barrelful of tiny fish, with a few larger species as well. Clearly, Ghana's coasts are being overfished, because yields are so minute, and yet fish is still very cheap here in the markets. I wonder when the bottom will fall out for that industry.

We returned for breakfast at the hotel. They always seem to have plain oatmeal wherever we stay and I'm definitely getting a taste for it. Afterwards, we went to the local market in Keta and if you plan on going to the area, I would totally recommend it. It was decent-sized (apparently much, much larger before floods came), hassle-free (nobody in your face) and they had a large selection of fabrics, for much less than here in the city.

We headed South to Woe for the Abruri Guesthouse, which was similar, but had a nicer ambiance for sure. The main attraction in Woe is the Lighthouse, which is on stilts, like a water tower. We played on the beach for a few hours (my first beach experience in three years!), which was a blast, and then went up the stairs for a lovely view of the area. Two caveats: 1. the beaches there, since people work there, have a fair bit of debris (i.e. garbage and crap) and 2. the lighthouse-keepers weren't helpful at all.

Anyways, the rest of the evening was spent going to the Happy Corner Restaurant, which had decent food and ridiculously cheap liquor. We got back to the hotel in the evening, got some sangria and bread and had a great time sitting around and bonding.

Sunday:

Breakfast was great (french toast!) and cheap. We decided to head back by tro-tro to Accra, but with a plan: instead of travelling the long way around the lagoons, hire a sailor to get us across the lagoon in his canoe with a boat engine! It being Sunday, there wasn't much choice in the tiny village (Anynui), so we had to argue over a price for a while. But when we got on the water, it was fantastic, like being on a lake at home - but instead of cottages there were palm trees and beach huts! The whole ride took 45 minutes, but was as much an adventure as it was a way of getting home. We caught a tro-tro from the town of Ada Foah and got home by late afternoon.

The weekend was nice and relaxing. I'll definitely go back there sometime when I need to take a load off. And I only spent about 360,000 cedi. Not bad at all.