The decision
I’ve been looking forward to taking an actual break and travel for a while. I even mentioned something related to road trip in my 2017 radio interview which never happened until a few weeks ago. I got home after work and told my wife to get ready, we’re traveling to Abuja on the 25th of September. My wife said we should plan the trip, I was like what’s there to plan? I mean it’s just the two of us for now, you know!
I called one of my Aunts in Abuja about 3 days ahead that we are coming and would love to stay over with the family.
Public transport
The decision to travel by bus to Abuja and come back to Lagos by air was partly because of budgeting and my desire for a stressful road trip. We bought the ticket for ABC Transport for 6 am the following day on their website, laptop and phone fully charged for movies (we were seeing The Blacklist at the time) and games, packed a few clothes and items we both needed into the same bag (as per couples nah) and headed for the Terminus. We departed Lagos around 7 am and didn’t get to Abuja until about 9 p.m at night, I’d forgotten the state of our roads 🤦🏽♂️
Visited my NYSC place of assignment
We had a couple of brief stopovers on our way for people to ease themselves, but 2 major ones in:
- Ayede-Ogbese, a town about 20 mins drive from Akure, luckily the same town where I served Nigeria in 2015. Say hello to Maths & Computer Science teacher that year [Insert bragging emoji here, LOL]. The stopover was for about 20 mins, so I took a walk to the school where I served. It was nostalgic to see some members of staff at the school after about 5 years.
- Lokoja at about 6 pm in the evening. At this point we were tired, sworn never to subject my beautiful wife to this kind of stress again. You know the fact that I can do it doesn’t mean we should do it.
Our Arrival in Abuja & the weird Uber warning
We got to Abuja about 9 pm in the night (14 hours on the road, whew!!!), Terminus was at Utako. I requested for a Bolt taxi that will take us to my Aunt’s place. My first impression of the city, maybe second apart from the long drive within the City, was the taxi driver telling us my wife and I can’t sit at the back because of security. Apparently, there’s been a recent trend of car highjacking by taxi riders in Abuja. Abj people, see your lives outside! 😜
My Aunt’s family
At around 10 p.m, we got home eventually and it was beautiful to see my little nieces and nephew. We had a long warm bath and crashed and damn, Abuja was too cold at night. Thank God I traveled with my wife 😍
The sad part was, amidst all the 1100+ pictures and videos I took during the entire trip, I didn’t take any of us and the entire family together. Shame on me.
Jabi Lake Mall
Waking up the following morning without having the thought of going to work was beautiful. Our good friend, Joseph stays in Abuja and we thought it would be nice to give him a surprise visit at work. I called him in the morning just to check on him and unknowingly find out about how his day is going to be.
I should have recorded his face when he saw us, he didn’t see it coming. It’s always beautiful to see your Joseph 🙌🏼and thank you for taking us to Jabi lake mall, esp. the for the treat at Kilimanjaro and some of those dope evening pictures. See for yourself below nah.
Millennium Park and Wonderland
We also went to Millennium Park and Magicland on Saturday. I won’t forget the calmness of just sitting under a cool shade despite the hot sun at the Park and that extra dose of adrenaline at Wonderland.
We moved around the city using Bolt, and for the first time, I didn’t see any estimate on the app. It’s then I realized seeing ₦2500 – ₦ 4000 is a Lagos thing because of traffic. ☹️
Church on Sunday
Not sure it’s because of the time of the year but I love how by 5:30 / 6 am in the morning, the sun is already out in Abuja. We went to church with the family for the 6:30 am service at Living Faith Church, Gwarinpa after which, we visited another Aunt of mine in the city and her family. Yeah, the trip was a family reunion and I loved every bit of it. We later went to the cinema to see Breakthrough. What a lovely movie, you should see it too.
Gurara Falls on Monday
On our way to Abuja, I wanted to do so many things while resting. One of which was to go to Kaduna by railway (Just for the experience) and visit Gurara falls, in Niger State. We couldn’t make the Kaduna train trip but I was glad we made it to Gurara Falls.
Going by public transport was kinda stressful, but we made it eventually. It was beautiful to see and hear the sound of the gushing water. Our guide said if we had visited during the dry season, the water will be less and we can climb the waterfall. Maybe that will another life.
Flight back to the Lagos
Before leaving for Lagos, we had the opportunity to visit the popular Area 1 Market to buy Kilishi (with Joseph again 🙌🏼) and visited a friend and her husband (Mofiyin, thanks for the peppered Kuli-kuli ✌🏽).
Our flight out of the city was for Tuesday morning (Oct. 1st). Another beautiful thing about Abuja is the distance from the City center to the Airport, imagine the joy of traveling at about 120 km/hr for about 3o mins without traffic, bump or bad road. Beautiful!
We had such an amazing time and my wife has been bugging me that we should move to Abuja since. LOL.
It’s actually worth considering.
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