ETP Takes: Staycation at Tarkwa Bay!

Hey darlings! Many people like to call me E for Enjoyment, last weekend I decided to live up my name Lool.

With the amazing planner of the Staycation!

Last weekend was a dream, I had been looking forward to the StayCation (shout out to Dr. Sandra Gboneme for the name) and it finally finally came – and I wasn’t on call!! We had been planning it for a couple weeks and initially it was meant to be for 12 people but after much back and forth only 6 people came through and I am so glad they did because their company was fantastic! We’ve even named ourselves the Chop Life Gang #CLG – Nicci, Chidinma, Olamide, Umar, Sandra & yours truly; hang on tight we’re in for a fun ride!

We all contributed 18,000 Naira each which covered accommodation, the boat ride to and fro, feeding, beach entrance fees and a couple of other miscellaneous stuff. The beach house cost N60,000 per night (weekend price, it’s 40,000 during the weekdays) and can comfortably house 10 people.

As earlier mentioned we took a boat to and from Tarkwa Bay, our set off point from Lagos was the CMS Waterways. Boat rides cost N500 per person as it went directly to the beach, but during the week if you get the boat to the Tarkwa Bay Jetty where people live it costs around N200-300 (but the walk to the beach through the village is like 30 mins, so getting a boat directly to the beach is more advisable).

So now we’ve gotten to the beach, around say 4.30pm and it’s got lots of people doing beach activities, beach soccer, playing in the ocean, having lunch – the environment was so vacation like and the population of non-black people actually shocked me; like I’d say 1/3 of the people at the beach were internationals, which was unexpected, however the cultural diversity gave Tarkwa Bay this international feel so it really felt like we had traveled far away haha.

Jaybee Camp was a solid 15 min walk from the shore where the boat docked, and carrying luggage, plus our food and water, the walk felt like it went on forever 😂 – make sure you share the load among yourselves when you go!

Umar Photobombing Olamide when he was on water carrying duty 😂

So when we finally got up to the Cabin everyone was super relieved, but also super hot – so we just dropped our stuff, got changed and headed straight down to the beach! The water was so cool, clean and soothing…like you need to experience it for yourself! Plus, there are wave breakers around Tarkwa Bay beach so all the waves that come towards the shore are really calm and you can actually learn how to surf (I wanted to learn but they were like 7k for 1 hour 30 mins and quite frankly I didn’t budget for that lol.

I love the emotions in this photo I took 😂❤️

As I touched on earlier, we brought our own food (used the contributed money to buy it) as it’s cheaper to just cook your own food and Jaybee Camp’s restaurant reviews haven’t been the most pleasant. Sandra being the organizer of this trip helped get the food stuff which included marinated chicken, plantains, frozen fries, bread, sausages, baked beans, jam, sardines etc (complete dinner, breakfast). However we had the staff help us to do the actual cooking as there isn’t a kitchen per se in the cabin, but there is one in the restaurant. We just had to tip them to cook/grill and the staff were pleasant and very grateful. Win-win.

After we ate till our stomachs were bursting at the seams (Sandra’s pre-marinated chicken was super nice), we played Whot Whot (which I had forgotten how to play but they quickly brought me up to speed, #CLG are cool people), played “guess the song & artist”, sang and danced to music under the moonlight…basically just chilled whilst looking over at the beach view, good times.

One thing we must note: time DOES NOT FLY in Tarkwa Bay! You would think you’ve been spending hours at the beach and find you only spent 30 mins; it’s such a beautiful thing because you get to maximize all your time spent there.

We got up relatively early the next morning (well, everyone except Umar, who was even first to sleep the night before 😂) so we went for a photo walk, lounged beachside, played beach volleyball and then Umar finally awoke when we were getting set up for breakfast. All this occurred in less than 2 hours. I tell you, Tarkwa Bay stops time 😂

After breakfast, we went sightseeing and we’ve located the next beach house we’re staying at; applications to join the Chop Life Gang are being accepted by the way haha.

After sight seeing we were hottt so we went back to the beach to dip in the Atlantic and cool off, then we got back to the cabin, showered, packed and said our goodbyes!

P.S – a very very very comprehensive review of our stay and guide to JaybeeCamp is available on ReviewNaija – I’d advise you check it out to know in-depth info about the place.