Today we are up early at 5:30 AM for our walking tour of Kakum National Park. After packing up our stuff, we head back to the truck to meet our guide. Kakum National Park is a 357 km² park that protects the rainforest, only 14 km² of which is virgin. There was selective logging in the area until it was protected (and even afterwards).
What makes the park unique is it's 350 meter cable and rope canopy walkway, which has a number of platforms where you van view the rainforest from at different levels. It is, apparently, the only one in Africa and one of four in the world (one of the other four is in Malaysia). We went early to see if we could see any of the animals (they are not very active during the day).
We took about one hour to cross over the whole canopy walkway, stopping at each of the platforms to look around and search for wildlife. We did not see any animals, but there were lots of birds.
It took a while to complete the walk over the canopy, as only limited number of people can be on the walkways and the platforms at one time.
After we completed the canopy walk, we went on a one hour walking tour of the forest with the guide. He would point out many types of trees and vegetation, and tell us all about them. In particular, he focused on their medicinal properties, and what they would be used for in their traditional medicine. In fact, he claimed to be the best asthma doctor in the world, having used one of the trees to cure a number of people of asthma. There were also trees that could be used to heal broken bones, cure coughs, as aspirin, as perfume, against mosquitoes, as baby powder, etc. It was all very interesting. Towards the end, the guide asked us how old we thought he was - we guessed about mid-30's - he is actually 57 years old!
When we got back to the truck at 9 AM, we had breakfast waiting for us, having been prepared by Mark. After breakfast, we packed up the truck, and then went to take a look at their exhibit. It was quite good.
We the headed on our way to Kamusi, where we will be staying the night at the same church we did about a week ago. We hope that it will be a bit quieter. We get there at 4:30 PM and after parking the truck, some of us head down to the central market. We are looking for some of the Kente cloth. It get there in a bit of a round-about way, walking on the train tracks (all the locals were). About 5 minutes later a train came through!!!. It is a huge market - over 10,000 vendors. We just scratch the surface, as we want to take a quick look prior to coming back tomorrow morning.
On the way back to the truck, we stop off at the internet cafe to take a quick look at our emails. Back at the truck, we work on our journals prior to dinner.