We recently had the chance to leave Kumasi and travel to Ghana’s coast for a short break. It was great to have a change of scene and see more of the country.
We began with a night in Accra celebrating our engagement and toasting some good friends who were shortly returning to the USA. It was a joy to visit the Mama Mia restaurant in Osu where we enjoyed many many slices of some of the best pizza I’ve had in years – seriously good with lots of delicious fresh toppings!! In contrast, we stayed at the TERRIBLE Byblos Hotel which won the dual prize of “most deceptive website ever” (www.bybloshotelghana.com bears almost no resemblance to the actual hotel) and “most successful daylight robbery” ($105 for a double !!). If they’d pitched themselves as “budget/basic – and quite filthy” then I wouldn’t have been surprised by what we got. However, to say that you epitomize “quality, comfort, class and hospitality” on your website, but have the atmosphere of a spoon combined with the facilities of a low grade prison cell really doesn’t sit well with me. Okay, rant over but brace yourself TripAdvisor you’re about to get some heated feedback.
Moving on…..we travelled down to the coast to stay at the Busua Inn (www.busuainn.com). After a particularly long and hot bus journey and taxi drive totalling 7 hours, we finally arrived and immediately feasted on salad (yes GREEN THINGS !!), homemade bread, lobster and REALLY GOOD WHITE WINE- heaven! Our room was beautifully decorated, incredibly clean and comfortable and we both had the best night’s sleep since arriving in Ghana.
The morning (my birthday 
!!) was spent walking along the sand and chilling out at the Black Star Surf shop which one door down the beach from the Busua Inn. Our stay was only slighly blighted by an over-confident (and quite big) spot-nosed monkey who hangs around the hotel. Although beautiful, the main vibe you get is “threatening and I could attack you at any moment” which slightly impacted my mood, but no harm done. The surf looked inviting but very strong and sadly, the beach looked pretty filthy which rather put me off. We reluctantly decided we should leave but had to stay a little longer when our luggage was mistakenly taken to the other Inn that the owners run (www.ezilebay.com) so we had lunch while our rucksacks journeyed all the way back to Busua!
A 20 minute taxi drive took us to the next bay where we had booked into a rasta lodge called The Hideout. Unconventionally, we reversed through a village for the last 100m of the journey, and then had to walk over a very rickety bridge which crossed a lagoon and then down the beach to reach the lodge – secluded indeed! The setting was beautiful, directly on the beach looking out over ever-changing seas, which included dramatic waves care of the tail end of Hurricane Irene. To our right was the village we had walked through and an elegant curve of rainforest, and to our left, the beach stretched away, ending in dramatic rock formations a couple of kilometres away.
We stayed in our own cottage which although basic, was adequate and beautifully decorated and the rasta/eco ethos was tangible throughout Hideout. The food was delicious, although some food poisoning care of something pre-Hideout did impact some meals ! For company, there were several Peace Corps volunteers who were on a break from working in Burkino Faso, and a large posse of various cats, kittens and dogs who were very friendly, particularly at meal times. I completely fell in love with “Skinny Dog” who nearly came back in my rucksack, but as someone pointed out to me, it’d probably be easier getting a stolen child through UK customs rather than a dog. I reluctantly left him behind but there’s a picture below anyway. All credit to the staff at Hideout who do an excellent job of running the place – friendly, efficient, great food and clean (by most standards even if not my ridiculously high ones!). It was so good we stayed for 3 nights and I’d recommend it to anyone travelling along the coast.
So almost a week after leaving we returned home. It was good to get away, and whilst I never thought I’d say this – it was great to get back to Kumasi !!