Green on Green...

... is maybe what I should have called this blog. Oh, well.

The night before I left Conakry, the Peace Corps Guinea Country Director Julie (who has been extremely helpful so far) and her husband Paul (who's work extensively with Outward Bound) invited all the PCVs who were at Conakry office for one reason or another over for dinner. It was
delicious by any standard - black bean salsa and guacamole, cold beers and fresh lemonade, salad and lasagna, cake and cobbler - and I did my best to enjoy it, knowing that it would be my last such feast for some time

The next morning two PCVs, Shrey and Sara, and I started the two-day trek to Kankan. It was raining, but not too much, the road was rough, the car was good and the driver was fairly terrible, but we did manage to make it intact and with only one flat.

The scenery along the way was pretty much what had been described to me - lush, green, partially cloudy. The mountains in the middle of the country dwarfed the hills of southern Senegal, but aren't incredibly tall and the driver seemed to think that I was insufficiently awed by their grandeur -  according to Lonely Planet, Mount Nimba, Guinea's highest peak, measures only 1,752 m (5,748 ft), and it's hard not to compare that with California's Mount Shasta, which clocks in at 4,322 m (14,179 ft). They were very pretty mountains, though, and I was quite impressed by how impossibly verdant everything was.

On the second day (we spent the night in a hotel-type place a little over half-way) the landscape flattened out as we approached Kankan. It's in the Haute Region, where things are flat and open and green right now but will dry out once the rains stop. It definitely wasn't the worst drive I've ever been on - I had good company and regular stops at gas stations and vendor ladies - but I can't say that I'm going to be popping in to the Conakry office any more than I have to.

Waiting for the car to be ready on Day Two