Elmina and Cape Coast

So to answer to the comments section - yes, Ghana was most recently colonized by the British, so most people speak English. Burkina Faso and Mali were most recently colonized by the French, so I'll have to dust off those language skills. I find I have enough trouble understanding the Ghanaian English, so wish me luck with the French.

We spent the past few days on the coast in two towns called Cape Coast and Elmina, they are pretty touristy for Ghana and are famous for these giant forts that the Dutch/Portuguese/English built and refortified in support of the gold and slave trade. In Elmina, many of the houses date back to the 1800's, although the only way we can tell which ones are old and which ones were built last year are the style of the windows. Elmina apparently has one of the best natural harbours in the world, essentially they have a little creek connecting the ocean to a lagoon, so they have a very active fishing market. When the boats dock there's a crowd that comes to haggle over the fish, to us it seemed like it was a pretty heated conversation, but people seem to do a lot of yelling here and then laugh and walk away.

We had our first venture into the actual local food in Ghana, previously they would serve us local tourist standards that consisted of rice/chips with fish/chicken. A nice woman named Henrietta introduced us to fufu (kind of a sticky doughy base, Sara isn't sure she's really ever going to enjoy it), yams with spinac (which we think is no spinach, as she said that once you cut off the spinac you can then dig up a cocoa yam - we can't do that with our spinach at home), and some rice ball things.

On Friday it was a national holiday, like our Canada Day. The celebrations seemed to consist of all the kids gathering in the school yard, or in bigger areas the town square, and then proceeding to march around in a military fashion. It seemed funnier in person.