Amedzofe canopy walkway nears 30,000 visits a year after opening
The canopy walkway at Amedzofe, Ghana’s highest human settlement, is nearing 30,000 visitors as it gets close to marking a year since its opening.
The meteoric rise of the site as a popular attraction, comes from it being the closest canopy walkway to a waterfall, leading to a record of close to 25,000 visits had been recorded since the November 2022 commissioning, Mr Augustine Oti Yeboah, the Manager of the site, said.
He said the highest ever traffic recorded was on August 04, during Founders’ Day, when more than 1300 visited.
“People had to be turned back,” he said, adding that visitors trooped in from as far as from Kumasi, Tarkwa and even further.
The GNA, which was following tourism Ambassadors for the Volta Region on a tour of some major attractions, met hundreds of tourists at the Amedzofe site.
Many spoke of dread as they completed the total 259 steps to and from the falls, but said the experience was unmatched.
Among organised groups at the falls were 70 students from various Universities across the country brought together by a collaboration of student leaderships.
Mr Frank Nyantekyi, the lead organiser told the GNA that it was his first time visiting the Region, after being attracted to the falls by its social media dominance.
Etornam Tsogbe is a Togolese national, whose company, Mosaics Tourism, had for some time been offering trips to Ghana, said he got to know of the waterfalls through his emissaries and had been visiting long before the canopy walkway was installed.
He was leading a group of 17 from the Republic of Togo, and spoke of an exhilarating experience, with many in his company saying they would visit again.
Other patrons complained about the difficulty level on the steps and called for an improvement.
Tour operators appealed to the government to help in the construction of the road leading to the site.
“The idea of a canopy walk is to get people to overcome their fears,” the manager responded while assuring of the safety of the place.
“The structure is strong and there have been no casualties. We are always on the lookout for people,” he added and spoke of strict safety measures which included rigid maintenance every three months.
He said there were some efforts with Zoomlion to get the road fixed, and commended media activity for helping sustain the popularity of the site.
GNA was shown artistic impressions for a planned pavilion complex to address concerns over the availability of shelter.
The development of the Ote falls in Amedzofe is part of an endangered species conservation project by a local non-profit.
A total of 700 acres is secured for the Onepone Endangered Species Refuge, which protects a critically endangered frog species, and some plant varieties.
The ‘Visit Volta Tour’ was a three-day undertaking that sought to savour the various attractions in the Volta Region, and places visited included the popular monkey sanctuary at Tafi, riverfront resorts at Kpeve, the Agbenoxoe grotto, and the Wli Waterfalls.
Source: GNA