We decided not to spend any time in Labe, since both Sira and I pretty much hated it as soon as we got there (except for the delicious pizza!). So we went to the garage and took a car to a small town called Pita (cost us about $3 each), where we planned to get a second car out to a small village called Douki, which according to Lonely Planet has a guesthouse with a "luxurious hut" right on the edge of "Guinea's Grand Canyon".
When we got to Pita we started asking around at the garage for the car that goes to Douki. The first guy we talked to tried to tell us there is no regular car to Douki, and that we would have to hire out a whole car (his, presumably) to get there. Luckily we have lived in Africa longer than five minutes, so we knew not to believe him and we went and asked around some more until we found the car. It took a few hours for the car to fill with passengers and be ready to go, but we had a good time waiting because everyone in Pita (except for the one guy who tried to rip us off) was really friendly.
We discovered that in Guinea, the station wagons that in Senegal are known as "7 places" are instead "9 places" because they cram four people into the middle row and two people into the front passenger seat. However, this can actually make the ride more comfortable - as you are bouncing over giant rocks and potholes, the extra person in the row means that you are crammed in so tightly that there is no room for your body to be sliding around or bouncing up and hitting your head on the roof. There was some sort of mix up with selling tickets for our car, so when we were ready to go the driver discovered that there were ten people with tickets instead of the regulation nine. What to do with the extra person? Have him ride on the roof, of course!
After about two hours bouncing up a rocky mountain road, we arrived in Douki. The villagers pointed us the way to Hassan Bah's guesthouse, about 2 km down a path. In ten minutes we were there - and discovered that the "luxurious hut" which was going to cost us about $20 each a night was just a regular hut, no fancier than my hut in my village. And the mattress was just rice sacks sewn together and filled with straw. And Guinea's Grand Canyon? Nowhere to be seen.
We were pretty disappointed and grumpy to discover that this place was not what we had been expecting. Luckily, Hassan Bah, the owner of the "guesthouse" showed up right away to take us on a hike. Which turned out to be absolutely beautiful, which cheered us up right away. (Although Sira still tried to convince Hassan that $20 a night was way too much to charge people, especially us poor Peace Corps volunteers, to sleep in a hut and eat village food. But Hassan didn't budge.)
We discovered that Hassan Bah considers part of his job to be entertainment, and that he is just Americanized enough to be hilarious. He grew up in Sierra Leone and worked on cargo ships for years, so he's a lot more worldly than your average villager. He can juggle and walk on his hands, and he loves making up acronyms: HCH is Hard Core Hiker, and WB is Water Bottle (which he can carry on his head with no hands). Cigarettes are Cancer Sticks.
So we had a great time, and when we got back from the hike, Hassan's wife had dinner ready for us: the standard Guinean dish of rice with a manioc leaf and peanut sauce.
Then it was off to bed on our straw mattresses.
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