Day 85: Conakry – Wild camp in Sierra-Leone

We dawdle a bit and despite a good night's sleep we are tired from the last few days. The hotel was a great choice and a haven of peace. We always had nice exchanges with two other guests, Steven (still staying and had to get into the suit today) and Josefa (left today after recovering a bit from an illness here). We know from her that there is a large Lebanese community in Conakry and on the offshore islands. The hotel managers are also Lebanese and were helpful contacts for us. The last two nights of the booking will be canceled without any problem.

We start late in the morning together with Ian and Catherine. There is more going on in the city, but no comparison to Dakar, for example. Many small shops are unoccupied. About half of the gas stations are open, we only see two that obviously have gas. There are a lot of empty fuel trucks parked somewhere. Hopefully Almuth and Simon will make it to the border on their motorbikes.

As we drive out of the city, we come across a roadblock at one point – we later read that there were clashes between the police/military and demonstrators.

Overland, public life seems significantly restricted if we compare this Thursday with last week's working days in the mountains. There is hardly any heavy goods traffic and there are fewer people on the road. Somehow it doesn't feel good.

The police and military at the checkpoints are a bit nervous. At one point we even have to get out and “stand at attention” until our passports are checked.

The border crossing is then easy – we come to an English-speaking country!

Stamping out your passport and carnet in Guinea takes no time at all. In Sierra Leone we are greeted with a friendly chat and we almost forget our entry stamp in our passport. The total number of checkpoints is annoying, as is the haggling over changing money and buying a SIM card. We may have miscalculated when it came to cash – ATMs apparently only exist in the big cities. So we probably really have to exchange euros. And we also have to pay a road fee of 500 out of the money we just exchanged – we had ignored that, even if it was only 20 euros.

We're coming to the tropics. Water, palm forests, lots of greenery.

We come to a country where people are obviously very lively, in a good mood and noisy.

And as we approach Christmas, Happy Christmas is heard more often than Good Bye.

We're a little late and take the next best spot, which is nice by the river but is still quite busy. We'll probably have to get used to this: a quick bread with egg and cheese in the middle of children who would like to have a bite. But a few adults confirmed to us that we could stay here. And the last children later show the tendency to hug us before they go away and go to bed.

It's an internal conflict if it comes to giving away things. We have often been told not to start doing this because it establishes a system of begging. But it still doesn't feel good.