Adventure Time Needs Adventure Shorts

Although I am first and foremost in this country for work, I do get to play a lot. The second weekend we were in Dubreka, Peace Corps had an outing planned to go to “Les Cascades”, pretty vague but that was actually their name. It was as touristy a place as you can find in Guinea, which isn’t saying much. To add to the adventure and to get some much needed exercise we decided to bike the 25 km to the waterfalls. Lots of up and down but it was mostly road biking. We rode on what is the national highway of Guinea, which really wasn’t that busy but when you see a beaten down semi truck flying towards you, it adds a degree of difficulty to the trip. 

As the phrase goes, “the juice was worth the squeeze.” We made it to this beautiful natural waterfall complete with adjacent restaurant owned by a Lebanese man who knows how to make some hummus. So we got to enjoy some swimming, some pita and to top it all off a cold beer. The best part about going to see a waterfall in Guinea is the lack of supervision. There weren’t really any rules or regulations meaning we could swim right up to and climb the waterfall, which made for the best shower I’ve had in this country thus far.  This really was the best thing to have after our first week of adjusting to living in Dubreka, host families, and getting back into classes.

After a full afternoon of sitting in the water and drinking beers at the restaurant we weren’t dedicated enough to bike back so we threw the bikes on top of the Peace Corps bus and headed home in style. The ride home was cramped as usual but we lightened the mood with some tunes which inevitably ended up on Disney songs. Don’t worry, I held back…..for the most part.

PART 2!

This past weekend was highlighted by my second adventure: mountain hike. It had been a long week and I was mentally exhausted from the stress of finding out our sites and getting into some more intense French lessons. So a few of us decided it was the perfect weekend to climb the mountain that looms in the distance not far from Dubreka’s large market simply called “Kilometre Cinqe” (because it’s 5 km away).   We found out that it’s name is “Le Chien qui Fume” or The Smoking Dog.  Probably due to the fact it looks like a dog lying down and always has clouds rolling over it.  Lucky for me, another volunteer’s brothers (Abdoulaye, Boubacar, and Barbo) are the Guinean equivalent to Bear Grils. They were our guides on this adventure and they couldn’t have been more badass. 

To start the day we take a quick taxi over to K5 and convince the driver to take us just a bit farther towards the mountain. At what looked like some random point in the road our guides tell the driver to stop and we get out in the middle of a dirt road next to a river. Looking across the river we can see a definite trail but there’s no bridge. They tell us that usually it’s easy to cross but after so much rain the last few days the river was about 3 feet deep and moving really fast. We moved upstream a bit and found a thick vine to cut and use as a rope to assist us across the river. Like I said, these guys are badass. 

From there on out it was pretty smooth sailing to the top. We followed a well-made trail for about half way up the mountain, passing two small children headed towards the raging river and a random family living fairly high up. This is a picture of them. I wasn’t even paying attention to them and then one of the guides yells to me in French that they wanted me to take their photo. Look over and they are Kodak ready. So odd.  As I took the picture I could almost hear the voice of a certain photographer I know saying that it would have been better if it was an action shot….preferably from a crazy angle too. 

The rest of the way up was much more rugged with more foliage and a hardly defined trail. Lucky for us we had our trusty guides to help us along. After a while the magic thought of “they know the mountain like Pocahontas” went away because we discovered that what we thought was just trash on the trail was the markers. A common item to sell is small bags of purified Coyah water and people would stab them onto branches to mark the path. Although this wasn’t foolproof, resulting in us yelling “Ou est les Coyahs?!” many times. Our guides never doubted the trail and took us straight to the top even though they admittedly doubted we would make it that far. 

Although we had been lucky with the weather all day, cloudy and not hot at all, it backfired once we got to the top. Cloud cover is great for hiking but terrible for sightseeing. We had made good time so we took our time enjoying our success. We all had a good laugh when we noticed that the three Guineans who looked so comfortable the whole walk up, even in plastic soccer cleats and basketball shorts, were freezing in the cool wind of the summit.  Being a bit lazy turned out to be the best choice because every so often the clouds would break and we would get a beautiful view of Dubreka. 

Trip down is always less exciting but walking with good friends made it great. I’m so happy we did it. There might even be a return trip in the works. I know there is a lot of other more important stuff I could be writing about but it’s not all about work! Hope everyone is doing great back home. Been missing home and friends a lot lately. Especially, now that my sister has gotten engaged! Congrats to you both, I love you and I will cheers my nalgene full of filtered and slightly chlorinated water to you two crazy lovebirds.