Once you arrive in Accra, you are warmly received after completing immigration and customs. Your cultural tour guide picks you up and transfers you by private air-conditioned vehicle in Accra, giving you a comfortable start as you prepare for the next day’s activities.

Your schedule then depends largely on your arrival time in Accra. If time allows, you may tour the beautiful and vast campus of the University of Ghana, Legon by private air-conditioned vehicle. You also have a brief orientation with your guide on what to expect during your stay in Ghana.

The University of Ghana’s Legon Campus is located 13 kilometers northeast of Accra and is described by the university as the nerve center of Ghana’s premier academic resource.

Guide: Included for the day

Accommodation:

• Mid-range Accommodation: The Pelican Hotel Cantonments Accra

Explore vibrant Accra, a city where historic and modern buildings stand side by side and colonial-era architecture is still visible. The city is described as 120 years old, with historic areas including New Town, Ga Mashie, and Jamestown. Begin at the W.E.B. Du Bois Centre, established in recognition of the prominent Pan-Africanist who chose to live and work in Ghana. The Centre supports Pan-African thought and includes a conference room plus a memorial and museum documenting Du Bois’ life and Ghana’s role in Pan-Africanism.

Continue to Independence Square to see the flame of African Liberation, lit by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in 1961. Visit Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, with its gardens and museum dedicated to Ghana’s first president, and see his final resting place after earlier burials in Guinea and Nkroful, his birth town. Then continue to Jamestown Community, the oldest city in Accra, known for its lighthouses, including the first built by the British in 1875 for trading vessels in the Gulf of Guinea and a larger replacement completed in 1921. You may also visit Brazil House, famous for Afro-Brazilian history, described as built in 1836 and completed 100 years after 1638, now a museum preserving memories of migration to Ghana by Africans from Brazil and Portugal.

Ga Mashie is associated with Old Accra and is described as the home of the original Ga settlers and the original name of Accra.

Guide: Included for the day

Meals: Breakfast

Accommodation:

• Mid-range Accommodation: The Pelican Hotel Cantonments Accra

After breakfast, check out and depart for Kumasi, the capital city of the Ashanti Kingdom. On arrival, visit Manhyia Palace, now a museum containing treasures related to the Ashanti Kingdom. The Ashanti form the biggest population group in Ghana and ruled this region for centuries through military supremacy.

At Manhyia Palace, disputes are still settled according to centuries-old customs, with the King holding the final word. If time allows, continue to the nearby Okomfo Anokye Sword Site, an important symbol of Ashanti unity marking where the Golden Stool “descended from the sky.” The sword has been in place for 300 years, and it is said that the Ashanti Kingdom would fall if it were removed from its sheath. After the visit, transfer onward for your overnight stay, with the evening at leisure.

The Manhyia Palace Museum was officially opened on August 12, 1995, by Otumfuo Opoku Ware II, the 15th King of Asante, as part of his Silver Jubilee activities.

Guide: Included for the day

Meals: Breakfast

Accommodation:

• Mid-range Accommodation: Lancaster Kumasi City

Set off to explore Ashanti culture on a full-day tour of Kumasi and its vicinity. The day’s listed highlights identify three craft villages as Ahwiaa, Ntonso, and Bonwire, while the detailed routing describes Ahwiaa, Ntonso, and Adanwomase. In Ahwiaa, see a community known for craftsmen who fashion Royal Stools, walking sticks, fertility dolls, hand-carved jewelry boxes, and other wood-carving items.

Continue to Ntonso to learn the cultural significance of Adinkra cloth and watch textiles created with Adinkra symbols using black dye obtained from the bark of a special tree that grows only in the North. You can draw your own Adinkra symbols or purchase pre-designed fabric. At Adanwomase village, watch local weavers work at looms in the town center and demonstrate how Kente cloth is made through a time-honored tradition passed down through generations. You may purchase Kente fabrics on display before a late-afternoon visit to Kejetia Market, one of Africa’s largest commercial centers, with traders from across Ghana selling fresh fish, authentic African fabric for custom-made clothes, beauty products, foodstuff, jewelry, and handmade crafts.

Ntonso is described by Ghana’s official tourism site as the homeland of Adinkra cloth and Ghana’s biggest producer of Adinkra.

Guide: Included for the day

Meals: Breakfast

Accommodation:

• Mid-range Accommodation: Lancaster Kumasi City

After a hearty breakfast, depart Kumasi for Cape Coast, traveling via Assin Manso to Elmina. En route, visit the burial site of two former slaves from the U.S. and Jamaica whose remains were re-interred in August 1998 during Ghana’s first Emancipation Day celebration.

You can see the slave river where enslaved Africans were washed before being confined in the castles to await shipment to the Americas and the Caribbean. Arrive in Cape Coast early afternoon, then continue to Cape Coast Castle, perched on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The Castle is home to the West African Historical Museum, established by the Smithsonian Institute in collaboration with the Ghanaian Government. Once a hub of human trading in West Africa and an important link in the transatlantic slave trade, it is now restored as an important UNESCO World Heritage site.

Ghana’s coastline has 28 forts and castles recognized together by UNESCO as one cultural World Heritage site.

Guide: Included for the day

Meals: Breakfast

Accommodation:

• Mid-range Accommodation: Lemon Beach Resort

After breakfast, visit Kakum National Park in Ghana, home to one of Africa’s famous rainforest canopy walkways. This canopy walkway is planned as one of the highlights of your time in Ghana, with the route taking you onto a suspended bridge above the rainforest.

Prepare to take a deep breath as you walk the suspended bridge and take in views stretching for miles across the rainforest. After Kakum, stop at Abandze, the ancestral home of Louis Armstrong, America’s famous jazz musician. Arrive in Accra late afternoon, then transfer to the airport in the evening for your onward flight.

Ghana’s Ministry of Tourism describes Kakum National Park’s canopy walkway as 333 meters long and suspended up to 27 meters above the forest floor.

Guide: Included for the day

Meals: Breakfast