March 13-14.: After leaving Abidjan, we headed toward Ghana, eagerly anticipating being in a country where we could finally understand people again — after all, English is widely spoken there. The border crossing went smoothly enough, though bureaucracy on both sides dragged out longer than expected. Unfortunately, this meant we had to drive the last hour toward Busua in the dark.

One of our main travel rules is to avoid driving after dark whenever possible. It’s just too dangerous, especially right after sunset when the streets are still busy with people, but there’s little to no street lighting. We’re always worried about the risk of hitting someone, a motorcyclist, or getting into a head-on collision. Plus, nighttime traffic doesn’t actually lessen — and everyone drives with their high beams on, practically burning out our eyes.

Busua is a small seaside village Eszti had read about somewhere, described as a “backpackers’ and surfers’ paradise.” We were skeptical — in the countries we had visited so far, we’d met barely ten travelers in total. We fully expected to be the only ones here too.

All we wanted after the long drive was a good dinner. The village seemed a bit deserted at first, but Eszti had spotted a charming place by the beach, so we walked over to see if it was open. To our surprise, we stumbled straight into a tiny tourist paradise: the little restaurant was bustling with groups eating, drinking, playing games, and the beach was alive with people strolling along the shore.

Although they offered European dishes, Eszti and Anna stayed true to their mission of eating local. Eszti ordered palava sauce — a delicious mix of coconut leaves, spinach, amaranth leaves (known locally as callaloo), and egusi (ground seeds from a type of melon), naturally spiced up with extra chili. Anna went for the famous jollof rice with fish, a spicy, fragrant mix of jasmine rice, tomatoes, vegetables, and herbs.

On our way back to our accommodation, we stumbled across a cozy little bar that specialized in homemade cocktails. Their secret ingredient? Flavored palm wine (with a modest 3–4% alcohol content) mixed with different fruit juices. The place had an amazing vibe — especially on Thursday nights when a DJ plays — and we soon found ourselves hanging out with the village’s entire rasta community. 🙂

We headed to bed early anyway, and it’s just as well — the party was soon washed away by a massive rainstorm. Even though it was only March, the rain was torrential, and we started to wonder how we’d manage later, deeper into the jungle during the rainy season.

The next morning, after a delicious breakfast of banana pancakes, we strolled down to the beach again. We ran into the rastas, who invited us to a full moon party that night, held on a hilltop in the jungle (where a small fort stands). We also met some fishermen who offered to take us to a tiny nearby island.

In the end, we declined both offers. Instead, we swam in the ocean — the waves were wild but it was still an incredible experience — and later Ádám and Bálint decided to take surfing lessons. Bálint had surfed before, but for Ádám it was his very first time. After an hour of lessons, he had another hour to practice alone — and honestly, he was probably the most determined surfer in the whole village!

We returned to the same beach restaurant, where we got to know a few local surfers and started to realize we’d stumbled into a really tight-knit community. The surf school also runs a community center where kids come after school for a few hours to attend activities or get help with their homework. Since it was Friday, it was just a game day: older kids got to surf, and younger ones played organized games on the beach.

That evening, the locals even organized a game night for us: we played Chinese-style charades while challenging one of the bartenders to surprise us with random local shots for just 5 cedis (about 100 forints). He took his job seriously — bringing increasingly questionable spirits, some surprisingly tasty and others hilariously bad, often tricking us about which was which!

After a month and a half of near-constant traveling, it felt so good to unwind here in Busua, where the locals do everything to make you feel at home. Bálint loved it so much that it took some serious convincing to get him to agree to move on — but with so many other places waiting to be explored, we had no choice.

The pictures were partly taked by us and partly by Anna and Bálint, and the videos were taken by Anna.