So after just a few hours of sleeping in the dirt, we got up and went to the gendarmes' "office" to get cleared to cross the border. I wasn't worried at all – I had a valid visa for Senegal, and supposing they wanted to give me a hard time for not having a Guinean visa, what were they going to do – deport me? The (Guinean) border guard was not so friendly this time, and did, in fact, give me a hard time – he kept asking me where my visa was, and I just kept pointing to my Senegal visa, pretending not to understand. Mostly I think he was just worried about doing his paperwork – he had to record our names in his book, along with passport info, our parents' names, where we were born, our favorite color, lots of other random information, and our visa number – which I of course didn't have. The driver of our car was very anxious to leave and kept telling me that I should just "buy a visa" (i.e. bribe the gendarme) so that we could go. But I wasn't in such a rush and wasn't worried about being thrown in Guinean jail (Etienne, our trusty Peace Corps Security Officer, would have gotten me out), so I just waited until finally the gendarme gave up and said I could go.
So then we piled back into the car, drove a few more hours until we got to Diaobe (I still don't know where it is really), and then from there we took another car to Kolda, and that was the end of my beautiful Guinea vacation.
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