Guinea: Conakry

After another long day’s driving we arrived in the Guinean capital, Conakry. Another tough capital which is too busy looking after itself to be especially welcoming to visitors.

Like other capitals we’ve visited on the trip, it is set on a long spit of land, the final 22kms took us almost 2.5 hours to drive because of the dysfunctional traffic.

The traffic was even more hectic than normal because there was an anti-government protest in the centre, which meant the police had blocked off some of the main route into the centre. We did consider not visiting Conakry because previous protests over the last 6 months had turned violent with the police shooting and killing young protesters.

The current President, Alpha Conde has completed his two terms in office and elections were due on 16th February, but he has decided to postpone to March 1st and call a referendum on the same day about changing the constitution so that he can stand for a third term.

We listened to the news on the radio on the way in to town and by the afternoon it sounded as if the protests had been peaceful so we continued.

The police who stopped us even made little jokes about the protests which was reassuring.

The protesters, mostly youngsters on scooters in yellow t-shirts seemed loud and good natured, cheering as we drove past and plastering posters of the opposition candidate on our windscreen.

We will be watching with interest what happens on the 1st March.

When we finally arrived at our hotel they claimed they had not received our booking. despite our email confirmation.

Luckily they had an annexe not too far away and the reception manager Barry jumped into Lenny to show us the way.

We drove into a scruffy works yard with big trucks and containers and we wondered where he’d brought us.

Then he showed us a really cool little apartment set in a Shoreditch style mews and this was a great base to visit the noisy, dirty, characterful capital.

We took a trip with Ozil on a wooden pirogue to small Kaasa island where he walked us round and introduced us to some of his family & friends.

We were told Kaasa was a beautiful island and it might have been, but like many places we visited, the litter detracted from the beauty & charm.

We had a couple of beers in the cute Obama bar, overlooking the bay and islands and made the obligatory jokes about Barack & Michelle dropping by as a helicopter passed overhead.