Guinea... Hot, sweaty and loving it.

Guinea… All we knew about Guinea was what lonely planet has written on it. Let me plagiarize LP for the beginning. Imagine you’re traveling on a smooth highway, and then get tempted by a tiny, dusty turn-off into rugged terrain, where surprising beauty and treacherous vistas define the route. Guinea is that turn-off. This is a country blessed with amazing landscapes, from the cragged mountain plateau Fouta Djalon to wide Sahelian lands and thick forests. Overland drivers are drawn here by rugged tracks and the challenge of steering their vehicles over rocks, steep laterite and washed out paths. (Now they are not talking about 5 ton trucks like ours, but range rovers decked out for overlanding)…

The border crossing was really easy. Maybe an hour max, we didn’t even get off the truck. As soon as we passed the boarder the people of Guinea were so friendly. We stopped right over the border to grab some lunch. It was an even better feeling then Senegal. We met a guy named Nicoa and his absolutely gorgeous wife. He tried selling us an antelope, but besides that he told us the road to Lobe was really good and we should be there in no time what so ever. Once we hit the road it was really good. It was dirt but we made really good time. 

We were going about 50km an hour. We had a little bit of trouble going over a river in a ferry. If Rosie was one foot bigger we may not have made it. It took some negotiating on our part with the locals. They were very stubborn moving the ferry close to the shore. Once they did Rosie got on it with no problems but exiting was a little difficult. Rosie lost her license plate, but that was it. We stopped about 50 miles from Lobe and free camped for the night.

The next day we stopped at Lobe and cook group got supplies for dinner while Nico, Ben, Steph and I were in a mission to find an ATM. It took us a good 30 minute walk through the crazy market town Lobe. It took us two tries but found an ATM that let us get a max 300,000 Guinea Francs = $50 bucks. After that we walked through the markets and bought lettuce, tomato, egg, avocado, carrots, and begets. We made an unbelievable sandwich.  Once we left Lobe the roads went from good to complete shit. It took us the rest of the day to get to Mammou. Instead of the roads being either tar or gravel they were tar for 100 yards then the biggest potholes I have ever seen for another 10-25 yards. Suse couldn’t get Rosie past 3^rd or 4^th gear. We took a 30km detour to Konkoure. We read in the West Africa rough guide that there was a nice waterfall. We were all stinky, smelly and needed a good moral bust. We found the little Village, but we couldn’t find the waterfall. The rough guide said there would be a left turn at the town, but we only found a very small dirt (and rough) road. We kept driving past Konkoure looking for this turn off. Everyone we asked no one had any idea what we were talking about. At this time it was about an hour from sunset, and the thought of swimming cleaning myself was seeing dim. We finally asked this very sweet older lady who knew exactly what we were talking about. She told us to turn around and drive back to Konkoure once we got there she was going to call ahead to a friend to meet us and show us where the waterfall is. Once we got back we were greeted by two young kids who hoped in the front of the cab of Rosie and took us on this very narrow, very rough road to a part where we couldn’t go any further. We got out of Rosie, and walked the rest of the way, only to find out that the waterfall dries up until the rainy season L… No washing today. (Right now my hair looks like I have a handful of gel in it from all the dirt. Every night I wipe my face and it looks like I am wearing makeup)… At this time we had every kid and most women from the very small village out of their huts looking at us. Suse asked what I thought would be the elder if we could camp in their village. He said yes, and within minutes we had our tents up, and the cook group was starting dinner. At this time I think the entire village was watching us. Sarah, Steph showed the kids how to do shadow puppets. It was very sweet and once again I got this moment of how amazing Guinea is. It doesn’t matter what town or village we pass people old, and young, men or women stop what they are doing smile a wave. It is so amazing, and feels really good. We try our hardest to wave and make someone days.

The next day we take off early and start a very long grueling day. We did stop at an unknown village for lunch. All the kids once again, came to our truck to see what we were about. I went to take a picture of them and they saw my tattoos and started grabbing and rubbing my tattoos like I was a rock star. It was the craziest thing I have ever witnessed…



 After we left the village we average 15km an hour (could be a little more, could be less) we drive until dark and stop at a village called Laya Sando. Suse asked a local guy if we could camp here. He said yes, and pointed to the soccer field. Suse took a hard left and Rosie got bogged for the first time. We dug out the back tires then used manual force (with the help of 10 or so locals) to push Rosie out. By the time we got Rosie out, and parked it was fully dark and every kid of all ages came to check out what in the world was going on at their soccer field. We must have had 50 kids and 25 adults staring at us. The cook group cooked, while we socialized the best we could with the locals (this is why I am traveling, right here right now)… I also ended up getting involved in a centurion (100 shots of beer in 100 minutes) bet with Jareb, Ben, and myself… With a side bet that Brittany can outlast Jareb. This bet will take place in Big Millys in Ghana. The bet between the Ben, Jareb and I is whoever backs out first has to buy the round (10 beers each if we make it to 100 shots)… It all started when Jareb said he could do it. I told him he was smoking crack, that it is harder than it looks. He said he could and it would be easy, so there we go, this is how stupid bets happen.

Right before we went to bed Suse invited all the kids to join us at 0800 in the morning for an hour long game of Soccer! I woke up at 0630 and town folk were already starting to show up. By 0730 every kid and most of the men and women showed up to watch bunch of 10-13 years old kick the shit out of us in Soccer. The football started off as a complete cluster.  Ben, Toby, Rhse, Brittany, Denise, Maria, Jareb, Steph, Carlos, Nico and I vs. every kid old enough to kick a soccer ball. It lasted about 30 minutes until two early 20’s guys walked over. One guy looked like plexico burress and the other guy looked like a thug (turns out they were the kids managers) they organized their 10 best vs us, and within minutes in the 85 degree weather we were playing a full on soccer match with these buggers. They were unbelievable. They scored two goals back to back, before we could even get our groove on. I then scored the next goal, followed by Talbout and Ben. While this is all happening the town folk are laughing cheering and having a great time. Imagine the movie Mystery Alaska, but done in Africa and with Soccer. That is what it was like. We were all sweating, and completely exhausted. If it wasn’t for Nico and Rhse we would have lost badly. Within no time it was 0900 oclock and we had to get ready to leave. We stopped the game and said next score wins. Each team huddled up and we planned on letting them win, but we were not going to make it known that we were going to. The game started, they passed 5 times and scored (There was nothing we could have done, that was all them)!!! The whole town cheered, and went crazy. I have a feeling they would be talking about this for some time. After the game we spent 5 minutes taking everyone pictures and cleaned up a bit. I didn’t notice Jareb on the field. He ended up springing his ankle. Back to the truck and grind! This next part of the day became one of the longest days ever. We left around 0930, and drove 10-15km an hour all day long. The roads were awful, stop and go, stop and go. Jareb ankle was getting really swollen and looked like it needed a hospital to look at it. We saw a Geneva truck with a red cross on it. We flagged him down and asked him if he knew where a hospital was. He said about 50km about an hour drive. A town called Gueckedou (Border between Libera, and Serre Leone), he told us he was heading that way. Jareb and Denise (she is a nurse, and speaks pretty good French) got in the truck and took off. We continued driving and the roads were not letting up. We drove and drove; everyone was getting a little tired. Three days of free camping no water, and very long days. To make things worse around 7:30 pm about an hour away from the hospital, Rosie decided to fail us on a hill.  She just died, and would start over, to make things even worse. We got caught in a tropical storm with lightning and torrential down pour. Talbout is a diesel mechanic back home and after an hour and half of trying different things they found out it is dirty fuel and the fuel filter needed to be changed.   After they changed the filter it took about another half an hour and Rosie was driving again. By the time we picked up Jareb and Denise it was around 11:30pm, and everyone was exhausted (Jareb said the hospital didn’t have xrays, or anything. The doctor said it was probably sprained). My back spasms were almost to the point of causing me to cry. We drove to a hotel, but found out it was full. They let us camp outside the hotel walls (basically a driveway). We didn’t eat, we just set up our tents and feel asleep. Every time a car would drive by it would wake me up. I slept horrible… That 24hours all I could think about is what the website said. We guarantee you will be hot, sweaty, breakdown, and get stuck. We also guarantee you will see places where no other travels have been and done… Yuuup that about says it.

The next morning I woke up early, and notice down a ravine was a flowing river. It was the first river we saw that didn’t look like a walking virus. I waited for my adventurist counterpart Brittany, and we decided to bathe in the river. We went down there and ask the local women who were bathing and washing clothes. They looked at me like we were crazy, but shook their heads like it was okay. The water was superb; we washed our hair, and our bodies, and felt absolutely amazing. When we got back, everyone wanted to do the same thing. When they walked down there a women told them no, there was something in the water that would make you itch and the locals don’t bathe in it (that’s what they think they heard her say with their very limited French) everyone backed out and Brittany and I were the only ones who are clean… If we itch then so be it! We drove for about three hours in the same damn rough roads. Just looking at everyone you can tell we are all on our final nerves. After 3 hours the road turned great, good tar with no potholes! Suse got to 6 gear for the first time in 3 days. I instantly passed out, and was able to get a good nap. Suse decided to try to make it to the boarder of Liberia, Ivory Coast and Guinea, and hopefully the next day we can cross (We heard there is a chimpanzee research center close). We got stopped at Lola at a police checkpoint and were told we couldn’t go any further to the boarder because of either rebels or because it was a military occupied road (I never got the actual reason) We couldn’t camp in the town so we ended up staying at the worse hotel I had ever seen. There were double beds only so my spooning partner ended up being Jareb. The water wasn’t working or half the lights. The bathroom had the fast and biggest spider I have ever seen. Jareb killed it while I screamed like a girl. The electricity only worked until midnight and after that we sweated all night until 0600.

The next morning we drove about 15km to the Liberian border. There we went to a chimpanzee research center. It is a Japanese and Guinea center. For $75 dollars each we hired a guide to take us deep in the jungle to trek chimps. We all started walking minus Carlos into the jungle. Cameras around our necks, water bottles in hand extremely excited… We started going deeper and deeper into the jungle when the guide looked at us and said rain. We were all extremely stupid and had thousands of dollars’ worth of camera equipment going into a tropical jungle with no rain coats or waterproof bags for the camera gear. I had my bag, but it is just canvas and not waterproof.  The rain started to pour and what started as a pouring turned into a torrential rainstorm. I along with everyone else put the bags under our shirts and walked from tree canopy to canopy. About 20 minutes later the rain let up and another 10 minutes we were staring at 6 chimpanzees 50 feet away from us. Swinging and climbing the trees. There was a creek in front of us and one chimp was by the water.  This lasted about 20 minutes until the alpha chimp made a noise and all the chimps moved to the ground and took off (seriously amazing sight). We walked about 5 minutes later on a trail and observed the chimpanzees for about an hour eating mangos in the distance of 200 yards away. Watching real chimpanzees in the wild is unlike anything I had ever observed. It was worth every cent. It was truly one of the most amazing things I have ever observed. I kept thinking to myself that I am finally living my life to the fullest; I could die at any moment and known that I have lived a good life. By the time we walked back to the truck it was too late to make it to the Ivory Coast border. (We heard the road was bad).

The next morning we took off on what were the worst roads we have been to yet. We were drove a good three hours through dense bamboo forest. We arrived to a tee junction, and asked a local which way to the border he said both ways but to the right were better. We drove for about an hour and half through deep ruts and hills until we reached a washed out bridge waste high water and impossible for Susie to make it through (we were 4km from the border)…. FUCK!!!!!! We had to turn around, and backtrack to the tee. We turned right, and continued on through horrible roads to the border. We crossed the border in no time. All the officials were hammered on palm wine. We stopped at the border to free camp. We went 100km in 11hours and had 53km to pavement…. Ivory Coast here we come!