A Day At Kokrobite

This weekend (October 29), my friend Sarah and I were ambitious. She invited me to go to Kokrobite as one of the other Canadians in our building was celebrating her birthday on Saturday. Everyone who has gone to Kokrobite seems to love it so I thought a day at the beach was what I needed. We left for Kaneshie Station around 5pm on a Friday. We knew traffic in Accra is bad at the best of times and I anticipated that the journey would take longer seeing as this was the busiest time of the week to travel. Kaneshie struck me as being straight out of an old market neighborhood in India. All of the buildings were old and covered in a thick layer of dust and dirt. As we approached Kaneshie, the taxi driver told us to put up the windows as “they boys here are criminals”. Theft is common in these areas and this wasn’t unexpected. This was another place (similar to Circle), where the best precaution is to keep all valuables in your bag and to wear your bag on your front. As silly as this sounds, you see locals doing it as well which tells you its probably a good idea. A nice man told us he was going to the Kokrobite tro tro station and we followed him through a sketchy poorly-lit road. The line up was long despite tro tros arriving frequently. 

After some messing around we ended up jumping on one of the big Metro buses. There were no seats but we decided we could stand for the 25km journey. Wrong. The trip took almost 4 hours (I wish I was exaggerating), and after a while your legs start to hurt. Knowing the likelihood we wouldn’t arrive in time to get dinner, I was glad I brought snacks and that we could buy food while on the bus (a huge bonus of Ghana). The road leading to Kokrobite was quite steep and very bumpy but eventually we made it to Big Milly’s Backyard. I was so exhausted from the week that I elected to go to bed early so I would be rested enough to enjoy the beach.

Kokrobite Beach

The beach was perfect and the water was warm. We had a great breakfast, bought some things from vendors at the beach and played in the water. Kokrobite beach is very different from Labadi Beach in that you go to the vendors, they don’t come and hassle you every 5 minutes. Dresses and scarves are huge there and I got a cute little African sundress for 7cedi. The usual tourist trinkets and beads are also available.  We had a wonderful lunch at Kokrobite Garden in an outdoor dining area. The pizza was truly delicious and I think it was a close tie between that pizza and Peter’s Pizza in Aburi. The service was great and the food was amazing. Well worth the money!

Some of the fishing boats on the beach

After our lunch, the tide was coming in so the waves were bigger and stronger. You can’t really go out far enough into the ocean to swim because even when you are knee deep in the water, the undertow is quite strong. We continued to enjoy the beach before our dinner. One wave caught me by surprise and I was swept under and almost lost my hat and sunglasses. 

Walking along the beach at sunset

In summary, the weekend was wonderful and Big Milly’s Backyard was a really nice place to stay. We didn’t stay for the Saturday night reggae but I still had a blast. The food was delicious and well worth the money. Kokrobite is more expensive than I was anticipating but you are paying to be right on the beach. The low cost of transportation and proximity to Accra made it well-worth the trip. For what you get at Kokrobite, the price is reasonable.