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Coverage / Ghana

Ghana

Western Africa

A West African republic on the Gulf of Guinea, Ghana is anchored by the old Gold Coast slave-trade forts at Cape Coast and Elmina, the Ashanti kingdom and its kente-weaving heartland around Kumasi, and the elephant country of Mole National Park in the north. English-speaking and politically stable, it pairs UNESCO World Heritage castles and rainforest canopy walkways with a fast-moving Accra arts and music scene that peaks each December.

7 activities · 8 pairings · 11 verified providers

What you can do in Ghana

Craft Skills (Bladesmithing, Pottery, Glass)

AdanwomaseJan Feb Jul Aug Nov DecKente is West Africa's most recognisable cloth, and Adanwomase is one of the villages where it is still woven by hand the old way. Weaving has been practised here for more than 400 years, and about half the town works in kente production, sending strips to Ashanti royalty and to buyers worldwide. On a community-run visitor tour you sit down with a master weaver at a narrow treadle loom, learn how the hundreds of named patterns carry proverbs, histories and clan meanings, and try the warping and weaving yourself. Each colour and motif has a message, so the cloth reads almost like text once a weaver decodes it for you. The visit sits inside a wider village walk that takes in the chief's palace, a house standing for three centuries and a cocoa farm, making it a grounded half-day in the Ashanti heartland rather than a shop stop.

Museums & Galleries

Cape CoastJan Feb Jul Aug Nov DecCape Coast Castle and its neighbour at Elmina are the most powerful surviving monuments of the transatlantic slave trade. Elmina Castle was built by the Portuguese in 1482, the oldest European building south of the Sahara, and Cape Coast Castle grew from a Swedish timber fort of 1653 into Britain's Gold Coast headquarters. Hundreds of thousands of captives were held in their dungeons before being forced through the Door of No Return onto ships bound for the Americas. Both are run today by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, and Cape Coast Castle houses the West African Historical Museum, whose collection sets shackles and muskets against Akan goldweights and ceremonial drums. UNESCO inscribed the castles in 1979, and since the 2019 Year of Return they have become a place of pilgrimage for the African diaspora. A guided tour through the cells, the governor's quarters and the seaward gate is Ghana's essential history lesson.

Music & Culture Festivals

Surfing

BusuaJan Feb Mar Oct Nov DecBusua is where surfing put down roots in Ghana. The village has a long sandy bay with a mellow beach break that is forgiving for first-timers, plus a right-hand point at one end for those who can already stand up and turn. It was one of the first places in the country to grow a local surfing community, and warm water year-round means boardshorts or a shorty is all you need. This is not a big-wave destination but a relaxed learn-to-surf and longboard spot, the kind of place you come to log easy days, eat fresh grilled fish and watch the fishing pirogues come in. Add the nearby coastal forts and the laid-back Western Region beaches and Busua makes a mellow counterpoint to Ghana's heavier history circuit. Beginners get consistent whitewater to practise on, while improvers work the point on the right swell.

Trekking / Hiking

Kakum National ParkJan Feb Mar Nov DecKakum is Ghana's best rainforest walk, and its canopy walkway is unlike anything else in West Africa. Seven rope-and-plank suspension bridges run 350 metres from tree to tree at up to 40 metres above the forest floor, level with the crowns of ebony and mahogany giants. The park protects a rare surviving block of the Upper Guinean rainforest, home to forest elephants, bongo, several primates and more than 250 bird species, including the rare white-breasted guineafowl that draws birders from around the world. Beyond the walkway, guided ground trails take you into the forest for birding and tree identification, best in the early morning when the canopy is loud with activity. Paired with the Cape Coast castles half an hour away, it is the classic combination of Ghana's coast: heavy history in the morning, high forest in the afternoon.

Wildlife Safaris

Mole National ParkJan Feb Mar Apr DecMole is Ghana's flagship safari and one of the only parks in West Africa where you track elephants on foot. Rangers lead walking safaris out from the escarpment each morning and afternoon, bringing you within metres of the park's African bush elephants as they feed and bathe at the waterholes below. Alongside the elephants you can expect kob, waterbuck, roan antelope, warthog, olive baboon and green monkey, with over ninety mammal species and more than three hundred birds recorded across the reserve. The park covers close to 4,600 square kilometres of savanna and gallery forest, and its headquarters sit on a ridge overlooking two waterholes, so game is often in view from your lodge. This is a raw, uncrowded alternative to East Africa's circuits, best in the dry months when the animals concentrate on the shrinking water.

Witness / Attend

PANAFEST and Emancipation DayCape CoastJul AugPANAFEST and Emancipation Day turn the Cape Coast and Elmina castles into the focus of a Pan-African homecoming. Emancipation Day, marked each year around 1 August, and PANAFEST, the Pan-African Historical Theatre Festival held every two years, bring the diaspora back to the sites of the transatlantic slave trade for remembrance and reconnection. The programme runs between Accra, Cape Coast, Elmina and the Assin Manso ancestral slave river, where the remains of returned ancestors were reburied. Expect a solemn wreath-laying in the castle dungeons, a candle-lit Reverential Night, a grand durbar of chiefs in kente and gold, and days of drumming, dance and theatre. Since the 2019 Year of Return the events have swelled with visitors of African descent from across the Americas and Europe. This is Ghana at its most charged, standing in the exact places the story began.

Best months at a glance

	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
Craft Skills
Museums
Music Festivals
Surfing
Trekking
Wildlife Safaris
Witness / Attend

Upcoming events in Ghana