Trip to the Republic of Guinea – Day Three

We were back at the airport after an early breakfast this morning. Check-in went smoothly and it wasn’t long before we sitting in the departure lounge once again, hoping for a different result today. And that is what we got. The plane departed according to schedule and in an hour and a half we touched down in a rainy Conakry. Until now everything had run quite smoothly….remember my comment yesterday??? Not understanding French is a huge disadvantage, but we could see that more and more people were getting disgruntled at the news coming through at the baggage collection point. The AluFer staff member that had come to meet us soon informed us that our luggage had not arrived! Senegal Airlines had forgot to load everyone’s luggage. Seems they suffer from an advanced form of incompetence! We had no choice but to head out to our vehicle and drive north to the project area. Another day in the same set of clothing awaited us!

Conakry is situated on a long peninsula which is covered by urban sprawl. Traffic congestion is rife and it was easy to see how the 270 km drive to site could sometimes take up to 6 hours. Once we had wrestled ourselves free of Conakry we could pick up speed. We followed the highway along the coastal plain, with beautiful views of the escarpment to the east. It was clear that we were well into the wet season, with many waterfalls flowing off the sheer escarpment cliffs and most rivers in spate. Very few areas of natural habitat remain, with even the upper slopes of the steep escarpment suffering deforestation. We arrived at the small town of Boffa at midday where we met with the district commissioner and two of his assistants, as well as the Okapi Environmental team. After a short meeting and introductions we continued along the coast towards Bel-Air, with two stops within the project area to orientate us. We stopped for a brief afternoon meal at the AluFer camp, after which we continued to the Bel-Air Hotel.