Staycation

For at least 6-8 weeks, Ryan and I have been very aware that we needed to take some down time for our family.  With Ryan's job + traveling, my guest house responsibilities, and just life in general, it has been nuts.  It used to get that way in the States too, but it seemed like there were some built-in breaks with life there.  Our culture offered abundant opportunities for road trips and long weekends.  We had multiple options for affordable getaways there including camping, visiting relatives, or cheap hotels.  We have really, really missed that.  Since last year's vacation ended up being a very emotional and frankly, sometimes stressful,  trip to the States, we have known we needed a chance to decompress and just have fun together.  We needed a vacation.

The problem was, we didn't want to spend the kind of money it would take to have a week of vacation here.  You see, we live in one of the prettiest places in West Africa.  There are abundant tourist opportunities here, but they come with a hefty price tag.  We have had no luck finding a clean and safe hotel with a private bathroom that will house our big family for less than about 250-300 USD a night.  And those folks, are nothing fancy.  If we want one with a pool, that has AC and constant electricity, we're looking at more like 400-500 dollars a night.  This is mostly because all of them would require us to purchase at least 2 rooms per night.  With our Stateside time just 9 months away, we simply haven't felt like we wanted to spend that kind of money.

To complicate things even further, we have 2 children with peanut allergies.  Because of their allergies, we also can't eat most of the cheap food options in our country.  Groundnuts (the local term for peanuts) are used in many, many things here and the understanding of food allergies is almost nonexistent.  So, it's nearly certain that if we stop at a chop bar, which is the local version of a drive-thru, we run the risk of a serious allergy attack.  So, we really need a place with a kitchen option or we have to eat at restaurants that are at a much higher price point.  For 7 of us to eat basic pizza or cheeseburgers and french fries, we're looking at least 70 dollars.  There are no value menu options.

Now, I'm not saying all of that to make you feel sorry for us.  At all.  We all have a limited income and all of us have to make choices about how we use it.  We could spend the money to take a beach vacation, we have simply decided not to use our money that way.  But, we knew we wanted to do something.  

So...we decided to take our first ever, STAYCATION.  With quite a few vacation days just sitting there, waiting to be used, we decided we'd make our own fun on a budget.  We chose to eliminate the cost of lodging, reduce the cost of eating out, and still have the blessing of fun and time with each other.  This week, we're exploring our area by day, and sleeping in our own beds by night.

Today we took a day trip to a beach about 90 minutes from our house, called Bojo Beach.  We had a fun time and we came home with only minor sunburns, which is always important to little ole fair-skinned me.  

Since we're fresh out of drive-thrus here in Accra, we made some homemade chicken biscuits, wrapped them in foil, and hit the road.

The drive out there went really well.  We left just after rush hour and half of the drive was on good road.  The second half involved us driving down a really rough dirt road and stopping every 10 minutes or so to stick our heads out the window and ask the locals if we'd gone too far.  They all just kept pointing for us to continue.   At one point, a shack called "Jesus in the Answer Metalwork" led us to a discussion of how the art of singing songs in tandem or in rounds seems to have been lost on today's youth.  And just to make sure our kids didn't miss out on that lovely worship option that so blessed us in the late '80s, we found ourselves singing one of our favorite Nigerian choruses in rounds.  I'm not sure they're going to beg to do it again any time soon, but they were good sports.  

After following the advice of enough pointing locals, we got to our destination. We parked on one side, where there is a hotel, and then we took a boat over to a sand spit, where we spend the day playing in the sun and surf.  

 This is the view as we were waiting from the parking side.

 Ready for a day at the beach!

 There were dozens of these little crabs crawling in and out of the sand as we waited for our boat.

Apparently, they save these big boats for the weekend, because...

 here's our boat and driver.

Here are the girls, headed to the ocean side.

The boys took the front.

We got there in time to watch this fishing crew at work.  Let me tell you, there was some serious strength involved in pulling in those nets!

There were so, so many sea treasures on the sand.  We found gazillions of "unicorn" shells, a good number of sand dollars, and lots of assorted rocks and shells too.

When I was pretty certain that I was nearing my sunburn threshold, we packed up, tracked down the boat driver, hopped back in the van, and headed back down the dirt road toward home.  Along the way we made and munched on sandwiches, while waving back at all of the waving locals, and oohing and aahing at all of the baby goats and naked children.  All in all, it was a great day and we're looking forward to staycation day number two, tomorrow.