Is The Kakum National Park's Forest Canopy Walkway Not A World Class Eco-Tourism ICON DESERVING OF WORLDCLASS PROMOTION?

On the 28th of January 2009, I joined a dear friend from the Pennsylvanian city of Scranton, to visit the Elmina Castle – from where we then set off for the Kakum National Park to brave the canopy walkway.

That canopy walkway provides visitors to Kakum National Park with a rare opportunity to experience a truly unique way of viewing a tropical rain forest.

It is unquestionably a world-class tourism icon that few responsible travellers who enjoy adventure travel will be able to resist pitting themselves against – once they discover its existence. After reaching the end of the last footbridge of the canopy walkway, I wondered if a creative way could not be found to make this gem of Ghana’s eco-tourism industry known throughout the world.

Surely, if all the responsible-travel professionals in the developed nations of the world, who cater to the top end of the adventure-travel niche of the global eco-tourism market, were made aware of this gem in the tourism sector of the Ghanaian economy, a lot more visitors would come to experience that unique attraction?

Would a little creative thinking that led to a series of webcams being placed at strategic points on the platforms surrounding the trees that support the seven footbridges making up the canopy-walkway, not make it possible, for example, to have year-round live webcasts of visitors crossing the footbridges – on a dedicated Kakum Forest canopy-walkway YouTube channel?

Traversing the 333 meter-long footbridge concentrates the mind wonderfully – as the thought of dropping the twenty-seven meters that they are off ground is certainly not something that one would want happening to one.

However, no matter how much one sways getting across it (and one does indeed sway – which is an understatement!) one is completely safe: for, in addition to being well-designed and constructed, it is also protected by very strong rope-netting throughout its length.

Not being as brave as my Scranton friend, I was thrilled to bits at having successfully crossed all seven footbridges and emerging in one piece: and with my heart still safely in place – although it occasionally missed a beat as its cowardly owner traversed the span of those seven footbridges held up at a giddy height by the seven stout trees to which they are tied.

At the end of that incredible experience, it was obvious to me that if a world-class eco-lodge had been sited in the Kakum National Park on that particular day, they would have definitely had a booking of a few days duration – to enable a nature-lover from Scranton to savour being in a unique tropical rain forest preserved by the use of imaginative measures: that also clearly benefit the local community and helps preserve their natural heritage too.

It is the prayer of the many nature-lovers who want to see rain forests such as the one protected by the creation of the Kakum National Park that the commercial department of the Wildlife Division of Ghana’s Forestry Commission, will succeed in attracting a suitable investor to put up a world-class eco-lodge at the Kakum National Park.

Surely, such suitably green accommodation would enable the Kakum National Park take its rightful place at the top reaches of the list of the world’s most exhilarating adventure holiday experiences?