Accra: Seven Days of History and Adventure

Discover few parts of Ghana on a 7 -day tour from Accra. Visit Shai Hills, visit Cape Coast, cruise on the Volta River, visit monkey sanctuary, hike to Wli Waterfall and explore Mount Afadja.

Shai Hills Resource Reserve

Rising unexpectedly from the flat coastal plain northeast of Accra, Shai Hills is a landscape of weathered granite inselbergs, dry savanna grassland and pockets of dense forest that once served as the ancestral home of the Shai people before their resettlement in the early twentieth century. Visitors can expect an open air museum of both nature and history, where baboon troops move freely across the rocks, kob and duiker graze in the grassland, and ostriches stride across the plains in one of the few places in southern Ghana where they can still be seen. The reserve's caves, once used as dwellings and sacred sites, add a quiet reverence to the walk, and the climb to the summit of the main hill rewards visitors with a sweeping view over the surrounding plains toward the distant coast. The terrain is gentle and the walking undemanding, making it an accessible introduction to Ghana's natural heritage before the tour moves into more historically weighted territory.

Cape Coast and Its Castle

Cape Coast carries a gravity unlike anywhere else on this journey. Once the administrative capital of the Gold Coast under British rule, its old town is a maze of narrow lanes, fishing canoes drawn up on the beach and colonial architecture bleached pale by decades of Atlantic sun. At its center stands Cape Coast Castle, a fortress built by the Swedish and later expanded by the Dutch and British, which functioned for centuries as a holding point in the transatlantic slave trade. Visitors should expect an experience that moves well beyond typical sightseeing, descending into the dungeons where thousands were held before passing through the Door of No Return, a passage that has become one of the most powerful sites of remembrance in West Africa. The castle museum contextualizes this history within the broader story of the region, and the surrounding town, with its fish markets and everyday coastal life, offers a striking contrast between past suffering and present resilience.

Kakum National Park's Canopy Walkway

Just inland from Cape Coast, Kakum National Park protects one of the last significant stands of tropical rainforest in this part of Ghana. Its signature experience, the canopy walkway, suspends visitors on a series of rope and plank bridges strung between towering emergent trees, offering a rare vantage point from within the forest canopy itself rather than beneath it. Expect an early start, since the forest is most alive with birdsong and movement in the cool hours after dawn, and a degree of nerve, since the walkway sways gently underfoot at heights of up to forty meters. Below the canopy, the park is home to forest elephants, several species of monkey and one of the richest bird populations in the country, though sightings from the walkway itself tend to reward patience and quiet more than certainty.

The Volta River

East of the coast, the landscape softens into the Volta Region, defined by the vast expanse of Lake Volta and the river system that feeds it. A cruise on the Volta offers an entirely different register of experience, unhurried and immersive, drifting past fishing villages where canoes are still built by hand, palm groves that line the water's edge, and small farming communities whose lives are organized around the river's rhythms. Visitors should expect a slower pace here, one built for observation rather than activity, with local guides often sharing insight into the fishing traditions, the role of the river in trade and transport, and the everyday textures of Volta Region life that rarely make it into guidebooks.

Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary

At Tafi Atome, community forest has protected a population of mona monkeys for generations, long before conservation became a formal concept in the area. Local taboo forbade the hunting of these monkeys, and the result is a population remarkably at ease with human visitors, often approaching to within arm's reach in search of bananas offered by guides. Expect an intimate, unscripted wildlife encounter rather than a staged one, set within a modest patch of forest rather than a sprawling park, and expect as much cultural insight as wildlife viewing, since the sanctuary's guides frame the experience within the traditions and beliefs that have sustained it.

Wli Waterfall

Within the Agumatsa Wildlife Sanctuary, Wli Waterfall drops from the Agumatsa Range as the tallest waterfall in West Africa, and the walk to reach it is as memorable as the falls themselves. The trail to the lower falls winds through farmland and forest, crossing the same stream several times over simple wooden bridges, and opens finally onto a natural amphitheater where the water falls in a wide curtain into a cool, mist filled pool. Thousands of fruit bats roost on the surrounding cliffs and take flight in dramatic clouds when disturbed, adding an unexpected spectacle to the visit. Those with stronger fitness can continue on a steeper, more demanding path to the upper falls, where the crowds thin and the views become more commanding, though the lower falls alone offer a fully satisfying and far more accessible destination.

Mount Afadja

Ghana's highest peak rises above the village of Liati Wote in the Avatime Hills, and the hike to its summit is widely regarded as the country's premier trekking experience. Expect a demanding but rewarding climb through farmland, secondary forest and increasingly steep terrain, with sections requiring hands as well as feet on the more exposed rock faces near the top. The effort is repaid at the summit with panoramic views stretching across the folded hills of the Volta Region and, on clear days, into neighboring Togo. The mountain also carries local significance beyond its height, with communities on its slopes maintaining farming traditions that visitors pass through on the way up, grounding the physical achievement of the climb in the everyday life of the region it overlooks.

Highlights

• Feel the rush of the Wli Waterfall, the tallest in West Africa
• Hike to the peak of Mount Afadja, the highest mountain in Ghana
• Enjoy a boat cruise on the Volta River, the largest in West Africa
• Visit the Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary and interact with Mona monkeys
• Experience a canopy walk over the Ote Falls and enjoy stunning views