Cape Coast & Elmina

Cape Coast and Elmina are two towns twelve kilometres apart on the coast of Ghana, each with a white castle on its shore, and between them they hold the memory of the Atlantic slave trade as no other place does. Elmina's is the older: São Jorge da Mina, built by the Portuguese in 1482 for the gold and taken by the Dutch in 1637 for the people — the oldest European building south of the Sahara — with the fort of St Jago on the hill across the lagoon and, below its walls, a fishing harbour of painted pirogues that is one of the liveliest sights on the coast. Cape Coast's, begun by the Swedes in 1653 and made by the British the capital of their Gold Coast, keeps its dungeons as they were, dark and low, and a door onto the surf that the guides call the Door of No Return; the museum above tells the story with care. Behind the coast, thirty kilometres north, the rainforest of Kakum hangs seven rope bridges between its treetops, forty metres up, which is where the day usually ends.

The traveller comes from Accra, three hours along the coast, and sleeps in Cape Coast or on the beach between the two towns; goes into the castle of Cape Coast with the castle's own guide, in a small group, and lets the dungeons and the door do their work; drives to Elmina for the harbour first — the pirogues coming in, the fish market, the asafo shrines painted with lions and ships in the lanes — and then the castle, and climbs to St Jago for the view of both; eats fresh fish with banku and shito by the water; and, the next morning, takes the road to Kakum for the canopy walkway before the buses arrive, and comes back to Coconut Grove or Brenu for an afternoon in the sea. On the first Saturday of September Cape Coast dances the Fetu Afahye; in odd years, in late July, PANAFEST brings the diaspora home.

The Guide's honesty: the castles are places of memory before they are sights — dress and speak in the dungeons as you would at a grave, take the castle guides rather than the men at the gate, and do not photograph the people who weep, some of whom have crossed an ocean to stand there; the tour buses arrive mid-morning and the castles are quiet at opening and at four; the fishing harbour at Elmina is a working place — ask before you photograph, and buy something; the beach resorts between the towns are pleasant and the currents are not — swim where the flags say; the Kakum walkway sways and is not for vertigo, and it is worth going early for the birds; the road from Accra is good and slow; and Ghana is the easiest country in West Africa to travel, warm, English-speaking and patient with visitors, which makes the weight of what these two towns hold easier to carry and no lighter.