The river road from Canjufa eventually deposited us on what would be a not-too-well maintained country road (A motorway for local interpretations) which lead to Bissau. One of the teams in front of us had some donations left, but after the experiences of the night before, their way of donating them was:
1) Park on opposite side of road from village.
2) Run to the back of the car, get donation bag.
3) Run across road to deposit bag.
4) Run back to car before the fight starts.
5) Drive away as quickly as possible.
It was both incredibly sad and horrifyingly fascinating. There might be a video of it somewhere, we'll see.
From there on, we had spectacular scenery, friendly people (a total opposite of the day before), and a reasonable traveling speed that got us to the point about 30km from Bissau where the convoy to enter the city was forming.
Only, see, we didn't want to go into Bissau - it's carnival season, and we were told that the city shuts down for the carnival at 3pm - until next Wednesday. With us having to be in Dakar by 11th in the am, we didn't much fancy being stuck there, as we had 600km and the Bissau-Senegal, Senegal-Gambia and Gambia-Senegal borders before us. But, we weren't allowed to turn around.
Huh. Okay.
With me not taking "have to go to Bissau" for an answer, I got escorted to the local Chief of Police, with whom I had a lovely conversation in... Czech. He studied in Prague back in the bad old days.
"You have to go that way, but turn around at the next roundabout and come back" was the final outcome of the chat, and having done that, we reached the Guinea-Bissau/Senegal border in about two hours. (About 12.30 local time).
It all went downhill from there. We shall pick up from this point in time in the next post.
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