Accra ... a real African feeling

-->

After sailing from the North Sea and starting the job down here, it was crew change time … in Ghana! Now talk about exotic places :) Landed in Takoradi port from where we were driven to Accra to spend the night and fly out from there.

And given my nice direct flight to Cairo, I had almost the whole day to go around.

Talking to the receptionist for a while, I found out that we were quite away from the city center, which kinda limited my plan taking traffic into account. Nevertheless, I got a taxi and went to the city center.

Started at the National museum which was empty apart from me and the employees, it’s not bad though, they have quite a collection of African origin tools, crafts, etc… I enjoyed my visit and found out a bit about Ghana and Africa in general.

The next part was the best though, the walk through the streets of the capital, at this point let me state the fact that this was much better than I expected, I was thinking I’ll find a poor shabby African city, but Accra was far from that, of course the poor part was there, but the center looked very decent, clean and nice and the atmosphere was really African, a touch of home :)

The street from the museum to Kwameh Nkrumah mausoleum was on the most quite a busy shopping street, and by that I mean shops right there on the street, well…you know, street stands :), somebody was selling music tapes, and it was very nice that the traditional African music accompanied me along my walk.

Then I got to the mausoleum, Kwameh Nkrumah was the first president of Ghana, apparently lifted the country state up quite a bit, the mausoleum itself also has his statue in front of it and a very beautiful fountain with figures of African men blowing in horns. Sad it wasn’t filled up when I was there. His wife is buried right next to him as well, who by the way was an Egyptian lady, Mrs. Fathia Rizk, of whom you can see photos in the little museum behind the mausoleum.

Then it was a quick walk through Makola market where you can probably buy absolutely anything before taking a taxi back to the hotel.

On my way to the airport I found out that I was actually the only one who ventured into the city, all the others just went around the area where the hotel is, and I also found out that I had a better day than most of them J Then there could’ve been nothing better than flying back home, to my own piece of Africa …