Macclesfields Finest - Africa Overland

Following a tip from Tom and Jo who own the Green Turtle Lodge, we headed towards Cape Three points the most southerly point of Ghana. Rumour has it this is also home to the best surf breaks in Ghana.

The road is pretty poor but manageable for most vehicles when dry. The drive took us through some pretty interesting scenery and past rubber plantations (smelly). We eventually turned up at the lighthouse which was pretty much of the picture perfect variety - for all you lighthouse fans out there. We chatted with the keeper and arranged to park up for the night. It was still early however so we wandered down onto the beach with some helpful directions from the locals. The beach is pretty beautiful and the surf breaks could be easily spotted, although today the waves were too small (wrong time of year).

I took a stroll, wandering past the only house on the beach. Owned by an American surfer who moved here a couple of years back, he lives out here with his Ghanaian wife and has the waves pretty much to himself. We never met him but he sounds like an interesting character, the locals like him so much they made him ‘Chief of Development’. So buildings can only be constructed on the beach with his say so - it also helps to stop the locals being exploited by the more underhand white eyes.

Back up the beach I met Tuters again, surrounded by a gang of children. We sat around for a while as they caught crabs, tried selling us coconuts, waved machetes around and generally laughed at us. Eventually some bigger lads turned up further down the beach, then there was aloud BANG! from the water. All the young lads ran off towards the explosion, where the older lads where already in the water. Dynamite fishing was the order of the day, the shocked fish all float to the surface making easy picking for the ‘fishermen’. Tute jumped in and gave them a hand, apparently the larger fish also become interested in this feeding frenzy and joined in the hunt, followed closely by the birds of prey (Kites - we think).

After our fun at the beach, I took a ’short cut’ with the kids around the headland. While Tute took the quicker normal route as he had surfboard in tow. We gave the lads a pen and sweet each, they seemed pretty happy as they wandered back to town. We cooked up an interesting Pasta and Corned Beef dish and then watched the stars while chatting to the pretty chilled out lighthouse keeper - ‘Charles’

In the morning Charles took us for a tour of the lighthouse and the grounds. We saw the original stone building from the slaving days, I think the current one was built back in the 1920’s? so its still doing pretty well. They have one of those distance posts - apparently London is only 3083 Miles away, which is true, but we have driven over ten thousand to get this far!!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 3:34 pm and is filed under GHANA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.