A Lakowe Lakes Getaway
I’ve gotten a lot of questions from friends and strangers asking for details about my getaway trip to Lakowe Lakes and what the planning process was like. In this post, I’ll talk about how the trip went and hopefully answer all questions anyone may have about it xo.
Let’s go!
The Why
The funny thing about this trip was that it was initially meant to be a weekend trip to Abuja with a couple of my friends. It was the next thing we had planned after our trip to Ibadan but as the date got closer, I realized I wouldn’t be able to afford the cost of the trip. I really wanted to go on another trip before the end of the year though, so I started looking out for places I could go to instead. The plan was to still go ahead and plan the Abuja trip for people who were interested in going and plan a smaller, cheaper trip for anyone else who was interested or in the same predicament that I was in.
In the end, my friends decided that it wouldn’t make sense to go on the group trip to Abuja if I wouldn’t be there so we just diverted our planning towards the smaller trip.
A good friend of mine had gone to Lakowe Lakes with his girlfriend earlier in the month and it looked like such a calm and peaceful location so I decided to check it out and eventually decided that it was the ideal Abuja trip replacement.
The Planning Part
The average amount spent on this trip was about N55,000 per person. This amount varied based on what each person spent money on.
The trip was set for Friday afternoon/evening to Sunday morning. Planning this didn’t take as much time and work as the trip to Ibadan did. All we really needed to figure out was how many people were coming and sort out accommodation and food.
I found the Lakowe Lakes Rate Card on their website and used that to budget the accommodation cost per person. The plan was to get a three or four bedroom apartment (depending on how many people were going to come). In the end though, thanks to a friend, we didn’t have to book from the official site because she linked us directly to one of the hosts — and we ended up getting a four bedroom apartment that was cheaper than we would have gotten it for if we had booked directly through Lakowe Lakes.
The cost of the apartment was N160,000 per night instead of the N201,500 that was on their rate card.
Now that accommodation was settled, we needed to figure out food. My friend had pre-warned us that while there was a really nice restaurant in the estate, it was expensive. Apparently, the cheapest thing you could order there was about N8,000. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m not rich enough yet to spend that kind of money on food for 3 days 🙏🏾. I started thinking of possible alternatives. What I eventually decided on was, on my way to Lakowe on Friday, I would make a stop at The Place and order dinner for everyone coming.
We had a plan to visit Omu Resort on Saturday so I figured we could eat lunch there and probably buy food for dinner on the way back. The other alternative for dinner on Saturday was to go to the restaurant and have a final night sort of fancy dinner. For breakfast on Saturday and Sunday morning, we could easily eat bread or cereal.
A day before the trip, I found out from our host that she sells food and we could place orders with her and she would send them over. This helped a lot so we ended up not needing to think too much about food.
For activities, my plan was for us to have a games night on Friday. I got a lot of games from two friends to use for the weekend. I also planned to order some boxes of pizza and take them with me when I was on my way to Lakowe.
A friend had also mentioned that Omu Resorts wasn’t far from Lakowe Lakes so the plan was to spend the day there on Saturday.
The Going Part
First, I want to mention that the trip to Lakowe is extremely long — especially with the worse than usual Lagos traffic. I spent the night at a friend’s place in Lekki the day before so I would spend less time in traffic on my way there. This was also because I had planned to leave to go there in between two meetings I had on Friday and there was no way I was going to make it in time if I left from home on Friday.
Two friends met me at Lekki on Friday and we left for Lakowe around 1pm. We beat traffic by leaving early — and it helped that we were going from Lekki — and eventually arrived around 3:30pm so that was cool. Almost everyone else arrived at night — around 9pm. They had basically spent the entire day in traffic 💀.
The Getaway Part
The house was pretty nice. It was really pretty and everyone kept saying the same thing at different points in time: “We should be staying here for a week, not just the weekend gosh.”
It had a snooker table — which is where most of us spent the entire weekend lmao.
There was this really pretty outdoor seating area that was accessible only by people in the house. There was also another seating area in front of the house that was really nice. There was also a grill, in case we wanted to have barbecue party or something.
There was also a table tennis board in front of the house and a couple of bicycles and electric scooters. The bicycles were N5,000 each for a day while the scooters were N10,000.
There was also a microwave and fridge so storing food was easy.
I should also mention that internet wasn’t the best in the house. It was only good upstairs or outside. Considering that we were downstairs most of the time — thanks to the Snooker table and the fact that the living room downstairs had a larger TV than the one upstairs — I wasn’t online much.
Should also probably mention that the TV wasn’t a smart TV. One of us brought along his Chromecast and HDMI cord so we didn’t have a problem with that.
The environment was so beautiful and calming. I’m not usually one to walk around to see the sights but I did this time.
You know how being in Lagos makes you feel constantly stressed and anxious? This place didn’t have that. It felt like I’d left Lagos and could actually breathe. It was beautiful and serene. The views were amazing.
On Friday night, we played games and had loads of fun. Out of the 9 of us, there were 5 people who I’d never really met or hung out with before (for an extended period of time, at least). I got to see and understand them beyond their social media personas and I don’t regret it one bit. They’re class A comedians lmao. I’ve never laughed so hard. We didn’t go to bed till about 4am.
On Saturday, we ended up not going to Omu Resorts as planned for various reasons. So we stayed in and did other things instead like riding the bicycles, playing table tennis and snooker and kayaking. Sadly, I didn’t actually kayak (can I use it in a sentence like that? 💀). We had Karaoke in the night and by the time I was off to bed, which was about 2:30am or so, these guys were singing along to Michael Jackson songs.
From what we gathered, the guys in charge of the Kayaking don’t come all the time. Our host was the one who got them to come — I assume she did because it was the weekend. It usually costs N5,000 for the ride but seeing as we were such great guests, she let us go on the house 😇.
I should also mention that the bicycles were owned by our host. I can’t guarantee that you’d have access to bicycles if you were lodged elsewhere.
We left Sunday afternoon, sadly. The weekend was amazing and I definitely need it to happen again soon.
Now, picturessss 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩
