A Day at the Beach

Bojo Beach Hotel

In Mr. O's previous sojourn in Ghana, he wasted little time in getting out to see the country by bus, taxi and tro-tro. This time around, there are a few other factors at play, namely Mrs. O, Little Miss, getting them around safely in a vehicle with a child's car seat, food, drink, diaper bags and keeping everyone happy. In almost a month, the family had yet to leave Accra.

You cross a bridge. How cool is that?

Thankfully, there's Bojo Beach to let us get our feet wet, so to speak. Mr. O borrowed a vehicle for the weekend and the family drove out of town West down the coast. As a rule of thumb, the further away from the city, the better as West African cities tend to use the ocean as their waste bin.

Paradise by the dash boat ride.

Little Miss approves.

So about 45 minutes out of town, we arrived at Bojo Beach (not far from backpacker hangout Kokrobite), which is technically private land of the Bojo Beach Hotel, but sits across an inlet on a large sandbar. So to get across, you need to pay a small fee and take a boat. So it is quiet, clean and does not have the usual crowd of rastas, kids and vendors selling curios. It's no all-inclusive, white-sand resort, but it's enough to make one forget they're just outside a hectic city of four million people.

Little Miss took to the water immediately and needed to be carefully guarded against the riptide, as she found the crashing waves hilarious. Mr. O allowed her to take a few gulps of seawater as a caution.

Just as difficult was keeping her out of the equatorial sun. She has a sort of proto-wetsuit for fair-skinned children and it gets filled with sand rather quickly. So we kept her under a patio umbrella with sandbox toys and plied her with bites of tilapia and yam chips with ketchup (her favourite).

Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. O neglected their own epidermal health and got some solid sunburns. Do as I say, not as I peel.

As any parent will tell you, getting out of the house can be a logistical challenge and you have to keep your goals simple. A day at the beach for the family was the first step in a journey of their great adventure.

Beaches: they're really great.

Little Miss showing off her beach body.