Guinea

Guinea – Country 34

After we finally got back with the Guinea visa from Bamako and crossed into Guinea. We had to go through the most tedious process before we were allowed to cross the border. We had a “fixer” with us who had lots of side conversations out of earshot with many different people, the amount of “officials” you had to go to was ludicrous. We even had to go and sit in front of some guy, still not sure who he was with the police and others, explain our trip and what were going to do in Guinea, he then declared we should be able to travel safely through Guinea. We might have travelled safety but…

We drove through a spectacularly beautiful mountain range, and pretty little villages without problems, which started to improve our Guinea experience. We found a small place to stay and fought a battle with 100s of Mosquitos ( I lost…).

The next day we were expecting a 3-4 hour drive into Conakry – wrong!!! It took 10 hours of negotiating corrupt police and customs officials, who were making up charges and problems every few KM, frustrating, to say the least (luckily, when I told them what I thought of them in English they didn’t understand me…).

We even had trouble at a filling station, we put 300,000 guinea francs into each car. As we were driving away one of the guys noticed his fuel gauge hadn’t moved, the pump had not given out any fuel. We had big fights here, they wouldn’t call the owner, as they said it was our car at fault. Only when we told them to add another 100,000 from a different pumps and the gauge moved did they relent and refuel, but then tried to tell us that as we were using a different pump we had to have less fuel now as the Diesel from this pump was more expensive, even though we just filled up the other car with the exact liters and it cost the same (ahhh!!!!). There was a soldier across from the station who came to see what the problem was, he did nothing but still asked for money for his help as he was hungry, so I gave him large baguette, you should have seen the look on his face, he can’t have been that hungry…

Guinea, was our first Ebola country we were able to get into, we were a little nervous about interacting with people. Every place you go, you have to disinfect your hands and get your temperature taken (your apparently only contagious if you have fever!) before they will let you in. It take 21 days for you to know if you have Ebola – we have 7 days before we can say we are all clear!!!).

After being in the dry desert countries, everyone was keen for seafood, so we went to “Obamas” with DHL and ordered prawns, but soon had food envy, someone ordered the lobster it was huge hanging off the plate!!! We went back a couple of days later and you guessed it had the biggest lobsters we have ever seen…

A visit to an orphanage to donate school supplies and beds, these poor kids were either sleeping on the concert floor or pieces of foam that was beyond disgusting. This is to first country I didn’t really interact with the kids, I felt bad but the Ebola threat was real here!

A great rugby clinic with the kids in insane heat, again no customer function here due to Ramadan.

The police, on the whole, weren’t too bad in the city, except for one incident, that had us stuck for a long time as they wouldn’t give back our documents, we had loads of passersby trying to help us. I said I would pay the “fine” but wanted a receipt, they refused to give me one (hard to on a fake charge) so I refused to pay – eventually, they let us go without handing over any money.

We took a boat ride and spent an afternoon on a pretty island, getting rolled by the waves, we all came back cut and battered…

On the way to Guinea Bissau we were expecting lots more police hassles, but didn’t find any (thank the stars…). What we did find or I should say didn’t (easily) was the road to the border. We had one guy show us they way down a dirt track through the fields till we realised, that it was a border crossing, but not entirely legal no passport control!!! Back we came and carried on along the gravel roads till we eventually found a real border. Everyone was so nice and happy just to do their job, one guy was so impressed that I was driving my own car, he asked me to marry him – told him next time I came through we could get married, he seemed happy with that…