La Beach

Trip Start Mar 11, 2005

Trip End Mar 27, 2005

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Flag of Ghana Accra, Ghana
Monday, March 14, 2005

Today we were off to a late start. Kailey had been up early and said there had been a bunch of black people at the house. Only later did we find out that Daniel had come to the house, a day early, and we basically slept through it. Daniel is the contact person we had in Ghana. Back in the 1960's when Shawn's Dad worked at the generating station at Akosombo, he hired Daniel as a technician before he left. Around 1989, three men from the Volta River Authority (Akosombo Dam) made a visit to Ontario to observe the practices at several of the (then named) Ontario Hydro dams. They made a stop in Arnprior for several weeks, staying at the Vacation Inn. Shawn sort of 'adopted' them and had them over to the house several times. We laughed as they were soooo cold and it was only the beginning of October! They went to Mark's Work Warehouse and outfitted themselves with big parkas etc. At the time I remember wondering what they were thinking of us and our country and our "foreign" practices and food etc

Fishing Boats on La Beach

. Little did I know that 15 years later the shoe would be on the other foot! Anyway, we were able to track Daniel down. He had just retired and offered to let us stay at his house and generally make our life easier in his country. He had great admiration for Shawn's Dad Jim, and any family of his was most welcome. So, now you know how the story with Daniel came to be, you'll hear mention of him many times as the story progresses. Anyway, I had written to Daniel that we would make our way to his village on Tuesday - we certainly didn't expect him to come and pick us up! I knew it was about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Accra, and didn't have any idea yet how we were going to move around. Oh well, we missed him, and felt bad about it, but it was time to eat! Boy, was breakfast a let-down. The toaster was broken, but Marian still insisted on putting the bread in it, so we had great lumps of dried out bread instead of toast. Again, the eggs were different. Imagine fried scrambled eggs - cooked in the famous oil again. The sausages had also been fried in oil until they were unrecognizable. Kelan asked if they had been living under the refrigerator and Andrew was sure they were something left over from Fear Factor. When we finally got our act together to get out of the house, we had Sylvester drive us to La Beach. It's one of the country's most attractive and lively public beaches and it's only about 10 mins from the city centre. This is Accra's best swimming beach, reasonably safe for swimming depending on the strength of the undertow

Kailey at La Beach

. There are several outdoor bars/restaurants to choose from, as well as the usual vendors on the beach. It cost 5,000 each to get into the beach. They tried to charge another 5,000 for the vehicle but we only paid 30,000 altogether.

There is a lot of garbage around the city. Everything you buy at the shops, and even when you get your money changed, all comes in black plastic bags. These are much like our plastic grocery bags we get, but these are all black, no writing on them, and they are just thrown everywhere. Even wading in the ocean you get spooked when something brushes your leg and you are relived to find it is one of the hated plastic bags.