After several days in the Volta region, we passed through Accra again and headed west along the coast. Four hours from Accra we reached Cape Coast, a lively city with the feel of an overgrown village that was the original capital of Britain’s “Gold Coast,” Ghana’s colonial name.

Cape Coast was a very easy city to walk around — although it was hilly — and we spent a lot of time walking along curving roads and passing by smiling people going about their routines. Although it’s fairly large, everyone seemed to know each other. It reminded me a lot of La Ceiba, Honduras, where I lived for three years in the Peace Corps.
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We spent our last couple days in the Casamance on the Ile de Carabane. Looking at these pictures, you can pretty much gather what our experience was like. Quiet and relaxing. There is not a lot to do there, which was just fine with us. We wandererd around the island (it’s located in the Casamance River a few miles before it reaches the Atlantic Ocean), made a sand castle on the beach, made conversation, ate good food.
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Abraham, in the blue shorts, joins in and helps haul a canoe up the beach. A small section of one of Varela’s beaches is a base for fishing canoes. We went down one afternoon to discover the canoes coming in with the day’s catch.
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