A day at sea.

Another day another country, this time The Ivory Coast, or officially The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, and another bus ride. We docked this morning in the city of Abidjan, to find a large port with many cargo ships and a sizeable container handling facility. We also found 9 green tour buses waiting for us, a bunch of semi-trailers waiting for a bulk carrier ship to unload and their drivers variously sleeping or resting on the ground near their trucks. Quite a spectacular sight.

Our excursion today was a long bus ride east (from the port in Sekondi-Takorada) along the coast to the towns/cities of Cape Coast and Elmina where we visited in turn Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle. These two structures were built by European colonial powers as part of their search for riches on the African coast and eventually became essential facilities supporting the Atalntic slave trade. At both of these places we were able to see were slaves were kept before being shipped to the New World and at Cape Coast Castle we saw one of the original Gate of No Return.

Today we docked at the port of Cotonou in the country of Benin. There is a lot that could be said about Benin as it played a noteable role in the Transatlantic slave trade, both as a source of slaves with local rulers selling slaves to Europeans, as a location of one of West Africas Gate of No Return and as a departurre point for slave ships from the Benin coast near the town of Whydah. In addition Benin is a country where the practice of Voodoo is very active. But rather than give you a lecture on these topics I will provide some wikipedia links on these subjects for those that are interested; Cotonou Benin Voodoo Whydah

A. day at sea.