My Trip to the Western Region-April 30

Believe it or not- this was my last planned trip with a fellow IFESH friend. On Thursday morning I met Martha, a therapist and yoga teacher back in LA, in Kumasi for our trip to the Western coast of Ghana. We boarded the STC in Kumasi at noon and arrived in Takoradi about six hours later. Takoradi is a busy industrial city on the coast. It has many ports where goods are shipped in and out. We found our way to the tro-tro stay as night fell. We couldn't find a tro-tro to Beyin, but a gentleman told me he would drop with us and make sure we could get a cab. I expected to be dropped with him at a taxi station, but this wasn't the case. He had the tro-tro drop us at his uncle's house. His uncle, Ali, just returned two days earlier from Maryland, where he lives. His uncle gave us a tour of this new house he was building, gave us a water, a coke, and introduced us to the whole family. He was very gracious. He works traveling around the world, Afgahaistan, India, and many countries in Europe. He was home this time putting the finishing touches on a health center for this community, the Alhaji Nuhu Memorial Health care Centre, in honor of his father.

Muhammad called this cousin who is a taxi driver and took us all the way down a very bumpy road to the Beyin Beach Resort. This beach resort has the best place I have stayed in all of Ghana. It was a quaint resort (4 chalets and 6? smaller rooms). Beyin Beach Resort had hot running water, doors that open a wall up so that the beach less than 30 yards from your door step, amazing food (filtered coffee and for the none vegans -croissants and warm brownies), countless lounge chairs, and fantastic serve. It had a nice king size bed where I can hear the waves.

The Nzulezu village on stilts was interesting. We started out our trip wading through mucky water to our canoes. Once we said down our guides paddled us to a beautiful lake. Once we arrived at the village we got off our canoes and wandered around. After paying the caretaker a donation and 5cedis of a bottle of liquor he told use the history. All I remember is that they moved from Mali and settled many places until they came all the way to this lake where they built their houses on stilts. All children learn to swim early in life- since they could easily fall into the water. They fish the lake for catfish and do have farms on the nearby land.

After the village we paddled out to the nearby crocodile pond where there were no crocs to see, but it was still very nice. As we paddled back to the entry it was just getting hot, which was nice because the day before the people we saw that had gone were sun burnt and tired. My guide/ canoe man let me paddle for a bit after I bugged him enough.

Back at the Beyin Beach Resort I hate more amazing food- my favorite was fufu and light soup that was vegan- yum! Martha and I also met and extremely nice Dutch couple that were on a two week vacation in Ghana. They were even gracious enough to give us a ride to Elmina! That saved us so much time and headache that I will be forever grateful.

I had a great weekend!