Weekend in Paradise

So, this weekend five of my friends and I decided that it was time to get away from Accra. We had heard about Green Turtle Lodge, and so we decided to go. We were planning on staying there and then doing a day trip to the stilt village. The trip to the stilt village didn't end up working out because it was a lot farther and more expensive than we anticipated. But, the Green Turtle Lodge was AMAZING. We got up really early to get to the bus station, and we get there and find out that all buses that we need to take (to Takoradi, a city in the Western region) are full until 2:30pm. We were not pleased, so we whipped out a guide book in the middle of the bus station trying to figure out somewhere else we could spend the weekend. The woman selling tickets seemed to feel bad for us because we looked stranded and somehow, 6 seats, right next to each other, on the 9am bus opened up. We have no idea why we couldn't buy those tickets to begin with, very strange, but we ended up being lucky.
When we got to Takoradi we caught a taxi that was going to bring us the next hour and a half to the lodge. Our taxi driver was awesome, him name was Champion and he shoved 6 of us into his taxi (we had to pay a little extra to pay off the police when we made it to the checkpoint). Driving to the Green Turtle was AMAZING. Most of the ride was on dirt roads and through very rural villages on the ocean. Each village we drove through, tons of children just ran after our taxi yelling "obruni, obruni!" I really wanted to stop and get out and play with the kids, but we didn't.
We finally got to the Green Turtle, which was pretty much a beach paradise. We got the last two tents available and spent the rest of the day on the beach. The area was really remote, and there was a village of about 4,500 at the end of the beach called Akwidaa. Another great thing about the lodge was that it was entirely environmentally friendly. They used very little electricity and the toilets were self-composting. There wasn't much too the place, some little huts to stay in, the tents, a bar, showers, and bathrooms. The beach was probably the prettiest one I have seen in my entire life, completely remote and no one trying to sell you stuff (like a lot of the beaches in Accra), white sands and pretty blue water.
The first night we had some great food (stir fry with locally caught swordfish), and then laid under the stars, which were amazing. Trying to sleep in the tent, on the other hand, was terrible. Three of us were jammed into this little tent that was filled with sand, and I felt like I was suffocating. I ended up just going outside and laying on the beach for a while in the middle of the night. The next morning we woke up at 6 to take a canoe ride in a river in Akwidaa. The village was really cool, and the canoes we took seemed really unstable (rocking all over the place, and also filling up with water because there were holes in them), but it was still pretty fun. We saw some cool birds, mangrove trees, and heard some monkeys in the forest. Our guide on the boat was Emmanuel, who was 20 years old, and super nice, he even came to hang out with us at the hotel later.
After the canoe ride we spent the day on the beach relaxing, had an amazing french toast breakfast, and took some pictures. That night we brought our sheets out to the beach and slept on the beach under the stars- which was wonderful. Unfortunately we got woken up at 3:30 because it had started to rain, so we went back to the tents. In the morning we had breakfast and then headed back to Accra. I already miss the beach, and definitely plan on going back to the Green Turtle again.