The Silver Wind spent the day tied up at the wharf in Takoradi, Ghana. This was the ship's first visit, perhaps any cruise ship's first visit, to this obscure city on the African coast just north of the equator. Takoradi is definitely not a cruise destination. My guess is that Silverseas chose the port because it was a good place to refuel before heading north to more scenic and famous places. Takoradi is about 200 miles west of Accra, the capital of Ghana. The Ghanaian government built Takoradi some years ago as Ghana's only deep-water port. It is small. It can handle only a few ships at a time. There were oil and gas rigs in the bay just outside the port. We docked carefully between two freighters. There were no passenger facilities at all.
Silverseas hired some buses and tour guides to come from Accra for the day to show us tourists the sights, such as they were. The ship-sponsored tours were simple and hideously expensive. There was one to a city an hour and a half away to visit some historic castles or forts used centuries ago in the African slave trade. The tour required three hours of riding a bus and featured an hour and a half lunch and "folkloric show." This meant that the seven-hour tour spent maybe an hour or so at the historic sites at a cost of over $300 per person. The other tour consisted of a bus ride through the city, a visit to a small park called "Monkey Hill" where there are rumored to be monkeys occasionally, a stop at a fishing village to "interact" with the fishermen, and a stop at a somewhat distant luxury beach hotel for refreshment and the inevitable "folkloric show." This tour, only three and a half hours in length, cost over $200 per person.
Michael and I chose, instead, to take the Silverseas provided shuttle bus to the central market in Takoradi. We spent about half an hour walking around the market circle. Nothing we could have done during a short daylong visit could give us more than a glimpse of Ghanaian life. The market visit in all probability gave us as much flavor of Ghana as a tour would have.
The people appear well fed and well clothed. The market stalls were shallow storefronts or in many instances mere areas of sidewalk. All manner of things were for sale. We saw one man washing canvas shoes and setting them on a low table. Strange and familiar foodstuffs were available. New and used clothing, housewares, cell phones and kiosks selling phone cards and groceries were all crowded together. Shopkeepers and customers all appeared to have cell phones. Ghanaian women, and some men, carried huge bundles of merchandise on their heads. The buildings were mostly of cement block. A number had unfinished upper stories; most had peeling paint. It makes me wonder if in Ghana, people don't pay taxes on a building until it is completed thus resulting in a general unfinished look to the city.
There were paved streets and sidewalks most in poor repair. There were sewers along most streets, mostly covered but smelly. Considering the heat there was relatively little odor and almost no trash lying around. The people were cheerful and friendly. Clearly, this huge market was local people selling to each other. Guests from our ship were the only white faces in the crowd. We felt reasonably safe and unthreatened. Tourism has not yet taken hold in Takoradi. Only a small, improvised market at the edge of the pier was selling tourist-type craft items. I wonder what it will look like in a few years as more cruise ships visit.
Michael and I returned to the Silver Wind well before noon. We spent a pleasant afternoon reading, writing and in the ship's pool enjoying the perfect temperature of the water. Later we watched the busy port activity. A small crane on wheels spent hours moving shipping crates from one place to another seemingly at random. A group of workers from a trash disposal company (environmentally friendly according to their logo) managed to drop a discarded tabletop into the water as they unloaded it from the Silver Wind. This required the advice of many sidewalk superintendents as they struggled to fish the round wooden object from the water. Please see Micheal's blog http://cbu-africa1202.blogspot.com for a humorous look at these and other incidents on shipboard.
Ghanaians are not punctual. The two pilots required to point the way out of the harbor were late as were the line handlers. Additionally, the line handlers had great difficulty removing the mooring lines. They got them tangled, in fact. The captain was in no good mood when the Silver Wind finally pulled away from the pier. Ghana tourism is clearly not ready for "prime time."
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Barbara Borsuk
barbara@mborsuk.com
Boulder, Colorado, USA
303 408-3639
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