Guinea
Now we are definitely into the wild west of Africa!!!!!

We were not supposed to go into Guinea for the part of the trip, but there was a problem with terrorism going into Mali (but because of border closures we came into Mali anyway).
Coming in from Senegal we were greeted in a very welcome way at the border as it took very little time as we had our visas. Our goal was to travel all the way down the country to hit the Ivory Coast border and also see the very famous chimpanzees.
As we rolled across the border, we noticed an environment among others that was more relaxed than that of our predecessor countries. The people were very colorful in their clothes (like that of Senegal) except they were very friendly……
The tarmac roads in Guinea are few are far between, sometimes you will run into a good highway and other times miles and miles of red dirt roads that suffocate us as other cars or trucks would pass us and made anywhere wearing a white shirt into a crimson red color. In one part they had not completed the highway so we had to take a small make shift ferry in order to cross the small part of the river.
The kids looked like the poorest in the world, but also the happiest, as we passed by or parked our truck, we would always have a plethora of little and big kids following or gathered around our truck waiting to get their first glimpse of foreigners.
We celebrated Christmas and New Years in bush camps along way. Christmas ( which I do not celebrate was done at a small National Park with waterfalls in which we had our first bath in days albeit the cold water. After leaving our Waterfall area, we had a broken spring on the truck which took four hours of fixing by our driver with a few of us pitching in help. New Years was spent at a small quarry bush camp in which some people partied into the wee hours of the night with a contingency of countdowns going on.
It seemed everywhere we camped, we had locals that would pass by for their daily wanderings and come and look at us cooking with amazement. One time we had to set up at a soccer pitch with a mass of locals watching the kids play a soccer game. I take it they had never seen four guys cooking food for the whole camp before.
The memory I will take away from this country is the happiness and friendliness of all the people despite not having much money at all. In one town, we ran into a kid who spoke almost perfect English from Sierra Leone. The boy had to come live with his brother because his parents had died. The boy could not afford to go to school, but he was the happiest kid I have ever seen in my life. I gave him a pair of my old shoes to take and do with them as he pleases. Perhaps he will wear them, or perhaps he will sell them off to help feed his family. Perhaps I will never know, but to see the smile on his humble face made me realize one thing: US AS FIRST WORLD CITIZENS HAVE A LOT TO BE THANKFUL FOR AS THE STUFF WE TAKE FOR GRANTED CAN BE USED FOR STRUGGLING PEOPLE ACROSS THE WORLD….

The highlight came on the eastern part of Guinea where we got to do Chimpanzee trekking.  They Chimps are not used to humans at all, so they kept a good distance from us up in the trees.  It was a hard trek but seeing the chimps in their natural environment was great…

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