Beach Break

Getting There

It was at least half the fun or rather battle in this case. According to the Bradt Guide, you can simply hail a taxi to take you to where the tro-tro for a certain destination departs. I got half of this after talking to a second taxi driver. He said take the tro-tro to Accra Mall, switch to one going to Tema, and upon arrival, there would be one to Ada Foah (pronounced Adafo). Sure enough, he was right and I found a tro-tro (never shortened to tro) going to Ada Foah. After about two and a half hours of driving through the extreme flat coast plain and many stops later, I arrived to an empty tro-tro park as the last remaining passenger. Not to fear, kindly Eric was there to guide me to a boat that would take me to Maranatha Beach Club. I coasted in on a small wooden canoe powered by a large sail make of rice sacks and a guy with a paddle.

Maranatha

Upon arrival, I inquired the room price which was 20 GHC, more than Bradt Guide’s 12 GHC. An immediate turn off, I wandered down the beach to another resort and ordered a soda which was more than twice what it should cost. Beer was expensive too. Back to Maranatha, I bought two nights in a tiny hunt with a sand floor. While each hut had a country flag painted on it, mine had a Ghanaian flag minus the star.

In front of the huts were a bunch of thatched-roof pavilions with chairs and tables and some chairs and lounge chairs near the water’s edge. When I say water, I mean Volta River water. When I boarded the canoe in Ada Foah, I sailed down the Volta River to Maranatha. A few hundred feet behind Maranatha, I could hear the waves thunder against the shore. It was great having to bodies of water as the Volta was a perfect place to wash after a salty and sandy swim in the ocean.

Beach

Of course, then entire point of this trip was the beach and swimming in the refreshing ocean. The first thing I noticed is how slanted the sand is relative to the water. Then, I stepped out into the waves and was almost knocked over by smallish swell. That never happens to me, particularly not for a wave that small. The bigger ones were even more intense as unless I drove under it or swam through the top, it would pick me up without so much of a thought and throw me onto the shore. This astonished me to no end. Perhaps this is because my beach experiences are limited, mainly Maine and New Hampshire with a little Cape Cod and Labadi Beach (Accra, Ghana) thrown in. While getting thrown onto shore was not fun, when the wave receded, it seemed to take half of the sand with it. While I made several successful attempts at bodysurfing, the last one ended up scraping my sunburnt stomach against the sand and then filling my hair and bath suit full of sand as it receded, a sort of “blank” you parting gift. While I did enjoy trying to not die in the waves and not get swept away by a strong rip tide, I found myself with more time to walk and read on the beach. One major trajedy of African beaches and many beaches worldwide is the trash. There were tons upon tons of trash scattered along the beach, mostly of Ghanaian origin due to the many discarded water sachets baring English script among the heaps of plastic bags, containers and other items. While one could by and large still feel the sand under one’s feet, it did provide a rather sad background to an otherwise gorgeous locale.

Rum!

In Bradt Guide, two places were suggested as a side trip from the beach clubs. One was to Crocodile Island which is now home to basket weavers or at least it was went Bradt went to press as no one at Maranatha knew what I was talking about. However, the rum factory on Sugar Cane Island was known to them and I chartered a motor canoe to take me there. The kindly owner showed me his sugar cane crushing machine, made in India but sadly broken as is so frequent when many Africans use machines. In the meantime, he gets his cane crushed offsite. Then, we moved onto the actual cane fields. He showed me that the plant is divided into three parts. The middle is crushed for sugar cane juice. The top is then replanted. After being crushed, it can be recycled as they do in Accra into paper but he simply uses it for fire wood and other uses.

Upon extraction from the cane, the juice is set to ferment in plastic, 55 gallon drums. After about three weeks, it is then heated in a rusting 55 gallon metal drum and the steam goes through the top into a pipe and across to a vat of cool water. The steam condenses into rum as it slips down coiled metal tubes and eventually flows out of a spigot at the bottom of the vat as rum. He brews two types, clear rum and a reddish rum. Many of the Caribbean rums are reddish colored because they ferment in wooden barrels. Since wooden barrels are not used in Ghana, he gets the reddish color by adding mahogany chips into some of his plastic barrels.

We then sat down to free samples. He brought two water bottles which contained his produce as one could have easily been mistaken for water. I suppose having his own label is a distance dream instead of AquaSplash and BonAqua bottled water. I had never had straight rum before so it was a bit intense, feeling a burning sensation deep down in my throat. While my Ghanaian boat captain and colleague downed a full shot of the stuff, I was reduced to gentle sips and even then could only finish half. After the samples, he refilled the bottles and I bought both red and white rum for 10 GHC each. While I did come around to enjoying rum straight, in the future I may break my cardinal rule of not mixing alcohol with sweet things and add some sort of soda.

The Hut

At first glance, the hut was intriguing. After opening a tiny, old U lock, I found a double deck complete with a single sheet, two pillows, and a bug net, a chair and a table. There was a single incandescent light bulb controlled by a temperamental light switch. Ghanaians use the energy/money saving incandescent lights almost exclusively as it is part of the reason why six turbines at Akosombo Dam with an output of 1,020 MW can power 24 million Ghanaians with some to spare for their Togolese and Beninois neighbors. The walls were simply thatched palms and the roof was a thatched something else. Fishing nets ensured that the roof would not blow away and an upside down pot capped the peak. While a sand floor was a neat feature initially, I came to despise it as at least half of that sand migrated into my bed on the first night. This was compounded by not having a top sheet (Ghanaians seem to be stingy with sheets). The bed was similarly awful as some of its supporting ribs showed a disdain for staying in a supportive position, preferring to rest on the floor. It made for a crummy night’s sleep, augmented only by the sound of waves pounding the shore.

Despite those setbacks, I enjoyed my time alone. I did not have to talk to anyone, not even the obrunis (well, except for one gregarious Dutchman). I started and finished Gums, Germs, and Steel which even featured a chapter on why Africa is black and has only a fragment of their once formidable pygmy population (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_peoples). Mind you, I agreed with Wikipedia and think the term is pejorative but an alternative has yet to be invented. I almost panicked Saturday as the tiny resort with maybe six paying guests was overrun by college students from Accra. It was interesting as it appeared that few had actual bathing suits, preferring to swim in whatever they had on yet many of those same students had digital cameras. Priorities I suppose. I did talk with a former Ghanaian who served in the army as a UN Peacekeeper in UN Missions in Cote d’Ivoire, D.R. Congo, and several other places. Since he goes to college in Labadi not far from Legon, we will certainly meet up for a beer to exchange stories (or me simply listen to his). All 200 hundred or so left by 6pm, leaving just their trash which was largely picked up by the time I got up this morning.