Coconut Grove – Elmina

This weekend, I was in Elmina. It was our monthly Sales and Marketing Review (if you could call it that) and rather than have a 12 hour meeting in the stuffy office in Accra, we went to sit by the coast of Elmina which is about 20 minutes from Cape Coast. The only unfortunate thing was that 1. the meeting was extended for another 5 hours and 2. The extra 5 hours leaked into my Saturday. Which meant that as I had to wake up at an unholy hour on Saturday, my rest time was limited to a few hours on Sunday.

What can I say about Cocount Grove Hotel. It is one of the “top of the range” hotels, there are a chain of them in Elmina, Accra and somewhere in the Ashanti Region I think Obuasi. It is just a little way off Elmina quite close to the castle. It is truly a gettaway kind of place as you cannot walk to town, as it is a 5 – 10 minute drive away. The setting is beautiful, right next to coast of the Sea, the view from the hotel is picturesque. They have your standard single and double rooms, and family rooms. They also have little Chalet’s for the family or a group of people to share if you want that privacy. You can lounge by the pool or slog it out in the gym. I have to say, it was very calming sitting outside on Friday evening enjoying a glass of wine and beef khebabs to the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks. The food is quite nice, for dinner as it was late (and I had been snacking on the table food of pastry and cakes the whole day), I had the khebabs with panfriend vegetables. For lunch the following day I had the pepper steak with mashed potatoes which went down quite well.

However, and as with Ghana, there is always a BUT, as ususal the maintenance of this beautiful place is minus. I mean, like I don’t think much has been done to it since it was built somwhere in the 80s.

During one of the lunch breaks I went for a walk around the area. There were broken A-C boxes, dirty window frames, I mean there were cobwebs around the frame which were older than me. The walls needed painting, the beds needed revamping and don’t get me started on the Television. I thought my TV was bad but at least my excuse is that my flat screen got stolen. An aged old Samsung TV for which if it breaks down, I don’t think you could find the parts to fix it, to add insult to injury, it kept cutting out every two minutes. In my bathroom, the handles and pieces where on it’s last legs, all rusted with mildew around the edges, and what was at some point a white towel was now bodering on yellow.

What amazes me is that this is a hotel which charges in Dollars and is always buzzing with people. So really, what would it take to use some of that profit to refurbish the place. They even charged extra for a frigging Sausage at breakfast, so that alone could pay for a couple of towels.

I think of the two if I had a choice, although not greatly better, I prefer Elmina to Coconut Grove at least you get a free sausage with breakfast.

Anyway, not withstanding the fact that I sent a report to the boss based on other people’s information, crazy man wants to fire bullets in my direction so going to find cover somewhere.

Until the next time