Elmina and Cape Coast

Accra is a city of 4 million people and Ghana is a country of 25 million people and, as noted previously, Elmina and Cape Coast are not the sleepy fishing villages I, for some reason, thought they were going to be. Fishing seems the definite mainstay alongside the ubiquitous trading. Each town is dominated by its castle and a fort; both are located in Ghana's Central Region. From Accra, one arrives first in Cape Coast and then on to Elmina. Elmina was established in 1482 at the site of a village called Amankwa, the first European (Portuguese) settlement in West Africa, and served as a provisioning station for ships going farther south to the Cape of Good Hope on their way to India. The Portuguese were originally interested in trading gold from Elmina but that quickly changed to trading in humans. Cape Coast is about 165km west of Accra - on a two lane road - and is about four times the size of Elmina and is the capital of the Central Region. It was also established by the Portuguese in the 15th century at the site of the Fante village Oguaa and, like Elmina, changed hands between the Portuguese, Dutch and British before reverting to an independent Ghana in 1957.