Central

Elmina is a working fishing port that happens to have a castle on it, and the harbour is at least half the reason to stay. The Benya lagoon behind the castle is packed prow to prow with wooden canoes painted in blocks of colour and flying flags carrying proverbs and slogans; the catch comes in through the morning, the noise is tremendous, and it goes on regardless of who is watching. Scattered through the town are the posuban — the shrines of the asafo, the traditional militia companies of the coastal towns. They look like nothing else in West Africa: concrete tableaux several storeys high, painted in strong colours and populated with life-size figures, ships, lions, birds and scenes from proverb and scripture, each one built by a company as a statement against its rivals. They are still owned and maintained by those companies, they stand in ordinary streets, and asking someone nearby before photographing one is both polite and usually the start of a conversation. Cape Coast, twenty minutes east, is bigger, hillier and more of a town to walk: a busy central market, a fishing beach below the castle walls, and — the thing Ghanaians actually associate with the name — schools. Several of the country's oldest and most prestigious secondary schools sit on these hills, along with a large university, and in term time the town belongs to students in a way no guidebook prepares you for.

Half an hour inland from Cape Coast the farmland closes into real rainforest, and Kakum National Park protects a substantial block of it. The park is famous for one thing: a walkway of seven rope-and-plank bridges strung between emergent trees some forty metres above the forest floor, which is as close as most people will ever come to standing inside a canopy. It is genuinely exhilarating, it sways, and the honest advice is to be there when the park opens — by mid-morning the bridges carry queues, the light has gone flat and the birds have moved up and away. The ground is the other half of the park and is skipped by nearly everyone: guided walks on the forest floor, where the guides explain what each tree and vine is used for, and dawn birding walks arranged in advance that reach the parts of the bird list the walkway never delivers. Forest elephants live here and are very seldom seen, which is worth knowing before you build a day around the hope. There are platforms in the forest for anyone who wants to sleep in it. On the road between the park and the coast, a roadside pond of basking crocodiles has been an unhurried stop for decades and is a pleasant place to eat lunch. Wear closed shoes, expect to sweat, and treat rain as possible in any month — this is the wet side of the country.

Ghana's shoreline carries more European forts and trading posts than any comparable stretch of coast anywhere, over thirty of them, and this region holds the densest run. They are not all Cape Coast and Elmina: east along the coast is a chain of small whitewashed forts above fishing towns, each visitable in half an hour and almost none of them on an itinerary. Anomabo has Fort William, built by the British in the eighteenth century at what was then one of the busiest slaving ports on the coast, later used as a prison and not always open — the town's long beach and its own posuban shrines are reason enough to stop. At Abandze the ruins of Fort Amsterdam sit on a headland with the sea on three sides. Apam's Fort Patience stands whitewashed on a bluff directly above a beach crowded with canoes, and the walk up through the town to it is the best short walk in the region. Senya Beraku's Fort Good Hope, further east again, is the same idea on a smaller headland. Inland from this coast, Mankessim is the traditional capital of the Fante and holds one of the region's biggest markets. The beaches along here are working beaches rather than resort ones, with a couple of exceptions west of Elmina where the sand is broad and clean and swimming is the point; the sea on this coast has rips and no lifeguards anywhere, and the health and safety guide is specific about what that means.

This region throws the best public festivals in southern Ghana, and they are genuinely public — nobody needs an invitation, and a visitor who turns up respectfully is welcome. Winneba's Aboakyer, on the first Saturday in May, is the famous one: the town's two asafo companies compete to catch a live bushbuck bare-handed in the bush outside town and carry it back to the chief, and the town spends the day in procession, drumming and colour while the result is argued over. Cape Coast's Fetu Afahye, on the first Saturday in September, fills the streets with asafo companies in company colours and ends in a durbar where the chiefs are carried through the crowd in palanquins under enormous umbrellas. Elmina's Bakatue, on the first Tuesday in July, marks the opening of the fishing season on the lagoon: the paramount chief casts a net into the water, a canoe regatta follows, and the town celebrates for days. Winneba also keeps a masquerade tradition at the turn of the year, with troupes in extraordinary painted masks parading through the streets. Practical points that matter at all of them: accommodation in the town concerned fills weeks ahead, the events run late and start later than announced, ask before photographing individuals and never photograph a chief's procession without checking, and dress a little better than you would for the beach — everyone else will have.