My hotel in Dalaba is charming, but dingy. Deeply indented foam mattress, no running water— just a full bucket in the shower—, and in the morning I realize that the janky electric outlet didn’t charge my external battery. On the other hand, there is Pulaar art everywhere, the hotel is in a very pleasant grove of mature pines, and it has a fireplace in the lobby. I’ve noticed that places love to play up the fireplace vibes, even though, as people tell me, they are not much used anymore, because it is not as cool as it used to be.

I emerge from the hotel to find something to eat. It is Ramadan, and the area where I’d expect there to be bean sandwich ladies is deserted. One lady is selling baguettes, just baguettes, and she shakes her head wistfully when I ask about beans. But down the hill a little way I find a café with a few men inside, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. Nice to see some leniency. The shop owner also has bread and hard-boiled eggs. No beans, but a mayonnaise hard-boiled egg sandwich will do just fine. One sandwich and a couple Guinean coffees later and I am ready to go.

After paying for my breakfast, I have 23,000 GNF left in cash. That’s about $2.50. This is starting to be a bit stressful. The closest ATM is in Mamou, where I intend to sleep tonight, 55km south of Dalaba. But before heading south I still want to wring a bit more tourism out of Dalaba.

In my outdated Lonely Planet guidebook, there is one paragraph about the stuff to do around Dalaba. The gardens I visited yesterday are mentioned, and in the same sentence, the guidebook mentions a lake the French created, behind a damn they built, which “irrigates Dalaba’s famous strawberries.” This lake is described as “nearby” the gardens. When getting into town yesterday, the only location I knew was that of the garden. I assumed that when I got to the garden my helpful guide would point me in the direction of these lake irrigated strawberries. In fact, the description in Lonely Planet could imply that the strawberries are themselves being grown in the Jardin August Chevalier.

Needless to say, if you read my description from yesterday, I did not find any strawberries in the gardens, or a guide.* And no one I asked around the garden knew where to find strawberries. People did know, however, the French word for strawberries, which I doubt would be commonly known anywhere else in West Africa. It was only after some internet sleuthing yesterday evening that I identified where the lake is located. Turns out I rode right by it on my way into town yesterday. This annoys me to no end, that I rode right by something I wanted to see without knowing it.

This morning I had a tough call to make. With $2.50 to my name, and at least 55km to Mamou, am I going to ride 10 km in the opposite direction to see this lake, and attempt to track down the legendary strawberry fields of Dalaba? I thought about it, and decided no. It’s too far out of the way, I just need to see my one site today, and give myself enough time to get to Mamou.

So my mind made up, I ride east out of town towards “Le Pont de Dieu,” (“God’s Bridge”). This is one of the more well known touristic sites in the Fouta Jallon. It’s a natural rock bridge with a creek running under it. It’s pretty close to Dalaba, only like 3-4 km. Some of the tour options have you hike out there straight from town with a guide. It is a beautiful bike ride. One thing I notice about this area is how much less controlled burning is used. Lots of fields of yellow grass remain. Farther north this stuff is all burnt off, but here it mostly is not burnt, and it looks quite a lot like Northern California.

When I get close to le Pont de Dieu I come across a large warehouse-looking building, dilapidated, but still standing. It is handsome and looks well built. A dude happens to be walking by and I ask him about it. He explains that it is a “hangar” for tourists. Not sure exactly what tourists need a hangar for, but its a cool building. A bit further along, closer to the site, I come across more buildings in the same style. The main one here is absolutely beautiful. The architecture might be described as Mediterranean(? I’m no architectural authority), with arches, brickwork, and bougainvillea growing up the side onto the roof. This building is also abandoned and dilapidated.

I am almost as interested in these relics of Guinean tourism past than I am the sites themselves. This looks like some very sophisticated tourism. Traces of a veranda, and a detached kitchen paint a picture of a very charming restaurant, nestled in mature pine forests, with trails leading into the woods and down towards the creek. Perhaps the upstairs were rooms? There are enough things to do around here to justify a multi-day stay. In addition to Le Pont de Dieu there are some other interesting features on the creek, such as a big forest of Chinese bamboo,** mentioned in many guidebooks, and of course the pine forest itself is fascinating, because it’s pine from the southeastern US growing amidst, or, mostly above, all the usual tangle of native trees and vines. It’s a different feeling from any other pine forest I’ve walked through. (I am left wondering: if loblolly pines can grow well here, could some of these Guinean plants grow well in northern Florida? I would bet the answer is yes?)

It also occurs to me many tour companies offer(ed) multi day trekking tours, led by guides. I think the participants stay(ed) in lodges. Maybe this is one of those lodges, or maybe the hangar was. Anyways, I have to decide which of the little trails leading down towards the creek might take me to the Bridge of God. The one I choose takes me there eventually, though I have a detour down towards a beautiful little garden first. Le Pont de Dieu is pretty much as advertised. It’s really cool. I go to take some pictures, and in classic Guinean fashion, notice that there is a dude doing laundry almost directly below, literally in the shade of God’s Bridge. And he’s yelling at me for taking his picture. I am very used to people yelling at me when I pull out my phone/camera. In my experience they almost never actually care. And in this case, it’s even more ridiculous. He’s right next to one of Guinea’s most publicized tourist sites. But that’s the thing about Guinea— there are almost no special land designations for tourist attractions. They are just there. In Senegal, for example, Dindefello, one of the most well-known waterfalls, is a designated natural area. I can’t remember the exact designation, but no one does there laundry right at the base of Dindefello (they do it further downstream), and you don’t see much trash at all around the waterfall. That’s just not the case in Guinea. All of the water-based tourist sites I’ve visited have had people around, mostly washing clothes.

Which is fine (although trash and soap in creeks is a bummer), but I’m still going to take a picture of the thing I came to see. I tell the dude he doesn’t own the bridge, god does, and he chuckles and keeps doing his laundry. There is, besides him, no one else around. So I set my phone on a rock and using the timer attempt to get a shot of me on the bridge. Then I take the scene in for a few more minutes and walk back up to my bike. I check the time. It’s only 11 am. A feeling begins to percolate. The feeling that I have to go see these strawberry fields that I apparently rode right by yesterday. That it is madness to be this close to them and not visit them. I should have enough time to do this and still get to Mamou. And the money I have is enough for 2 meals.

I can go straight to the lake from here without taking the highway, along very bad roads. Which is what I do. This is a questionable decision as the trails are rough and slow. They are not thoroughfares, for the most part, just little dinky connecting trails. I have to carry my bike across a couple steep valleys, but I get to the lake. And the resemblance to NorCal continues, at least superficially. It is a reservoir during a drought year, with ~100 ft of bank exposed below the high-water line. Just like Lake Shasta. Attached to the dam is a piping system, which links to a concrete canal running west from the damn. I follow this canal, assuming it will lead me to beautiful fields of strawberries.

In fact, as usual, it is anything but obvious where anything is. There is a reason I was able to ride right by this lake yesterday— signage is non-existent. I assumed once I found the lake that finding the strawberry fields would be straightforward. But I clearly need to stop assuming things in Guinea. I poke around. There are many nice, beautifully irrigated gardens here, with tidy rows of all the usual vegetables, but no sign of strawberries. I turn to asking people, which delivers results, and I am pointed towards a big compound where I am greeted by a man named Mamadou Lamarana Diallo. I have found the dude.

Mamadou is really cool. His garden is fantastic, and it delivers: he has a patch of strawberries growing. Not a huge patch, but some nice, neat rows with little red dots glowing under the leaves. What a miracle. Strawberries in the tropics. This is one of the things the French figured out could work here. Mamadou explains that there used to be a lot more people growing strawberries, but not so many now. He is very proud of the land, asking me to observe on a few occasions the darkness of the soil.

We walk into the patch of strawberries and Mamadou and his assistant begin at once to pick fruits. He asks me how many baskets I want. I tell him sheepishly that I actually don’t have any money. He says ok whatever and keeps picking. I get his attention and emphasize, sincerely, that I wish I had cash, but I have very little, and need it for the road to Mamou. He legitimately doesn’t seem to care, and hands me a beautiful basket of strawberries. I tell him one last time “Mamadou, I honestly can’t pay for this.” He pushes the basket into my hands. “Cadeau” (Present). So, I munch away on some strawberries.

Then Mamadou goes and picks a handsome bunch of carrots. Really nice, juicy looking carrots. Carrots are one of the things I could grow only with marginal success in Kédougou during the Peace Corps. But Mamadou has it down here. We discuss his situation as a farmer, where to go from here. He’s got it good, really. The water situation is good; even in this year of well below average rainfall it is not an issue. The French built irrigation lake provides dry season water to this whole valley. Soil is excellent quality. He does not use pesticides at all and the only fertilizer is chicken and cow manure. What he wants is a greenhouse. Mamadou could do crazy things with a greenhouse. It’s not clear to me why he can’t finance a greenhouse with the productivity he has currently. The market here sucks obviously. Mamadou, as is so common, inquires a few times if I can’t help him get a grant or a loan.

The thought that occurs to me here is-- this guy already has about as good a setup as anyone in Guinea to grow vegetables, better soil, climate, and water availability than anyone I've ever seen in Guinea. Good fences too. Compare this to the women’s gardens in Toubacouta and Kelimbou where they are digging little wells to try to eke out a bit of muddy water to get through the dry season. How do you justify a loan for one and not the other. A lot to think about. I am not an agricultural financier; despite the expectations of the many gardeners, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting on this trip. I can’t blame Mamadou for bringing it up, and it does not diminish my respect for him at all.

After this quick tour of the strawberry garden, I start thinking about how to fit all these carrots into the limited bag space on my bike. I tell Mamadou I’m going to go find some food in Dalaba on my way south. He shakes his head and tells me to come eat rice at his house. Or he asks if I will, please. The man knows I have no money. I remind him of this. He insists. I’m not going to say no. At his house, I meet Mamadou’s brother, Amadou, who, every Sunday, delivers strawberries to the French and American Embassies in Conakry. I was impressed by both of these men and their vision for Guinea’s agricultural potential.

In fact, Guinea was the most agriculturally productive French colony in West Africa. After colonization production collapsed. This is in part because when Touré kicked the French out, he did so with some, let's say, gusto. He was pretty outspoken in his disdain of his former colonial rulers. So, the French, when leaving destroyed a lot of infrastructure they’d built, trashing the cars they were leaving behinds, etc. I don’t know many specifics, but this seems to have been part of why agricultural productivity declined. But it also seems to me that the Touré regime threw the baby out with the bath water. In kicking out the French they got rid of the people who were trained agronomists, agricultural engineers, etc, with no real plan for how to replace this expertise. One can argue that the French ought to have trained more Guineans to do these jobs. I don’t know, this is a long discussion.

Point is, Amadou and Mamadou seem to understand what Guinea could be. They are also really generous and dish up an amazing plate of Senegalese style rice and fish. It’s very good and I eat more than my fill and have nice conversations with them and a couple other guys. They are all very excited about my trip. I set a hard cutoff time to leave as 3pm. At 3:30 I stagger away from the lunch bowl and go about stuffing the carrots Mamadou gave me into the bag on my bike. I give Mamadou 10,000 of the 23,000 I have. I’d like to give him another 10,000, but it feels like I should have at least a dollar with me when I am about to ride 65 km (I am now farther from Mamou than where I started this morning) in case I need a couple bananas or something. Amadou walks me to the trail. On our way out a woman plants her feet and stands squarely in front of me and says some stern words in Pulaar. I don’t know exactly what she says but I catch her drift. She’s saying that she gave me directions to find the strawberries, and to Mamadou’s compound, and I have to pay her for this service. I could definitely ignore her. At a certain point, when traveling in a country you have to learn to ignore things like this, and I do all the time. But I decide to give her 3000 ($0.33). So, after all this I take off. It is 4pm. I am 65 km from an ATM, and I have $1.11 on me.

Dramatic, but not all that dramatic. I bike distances like this all the time and use as much money or less. Though it does feel a bit different to literally only have this much money. But my stomach is full, and I feel good and cruise back south into Mamou. I’d toyed with the idea of trying to take some dirt roads parrallel to the highway. You see so much more of the country doing this. If I had more cash I might go for it, and camped along the way, but today with the constraints I am facing I resolve to just take the highway all the way.

To the south of Mamou the highway climbs way up a steep hill. This is when I get a sense of the geographic setting of Dalaba, and the agricultural lands that surround it, with their pine forests and strawberry fields. It is set on on the north facing slopes of this rather significant section of the Futa Jallon. This surely moderates the climate, along with the elevation. On the other side of this crest there are no more pines, they stop pretty abruptly with the border of this microclimate.

After this the ride is mostly downhill. I am finally dropping off this plateau, which I have been on since I climbed up to Salamata a couple weeks ago after Gaoual. To get back to Senegal I will have to climb, one more time, up and over these mountains, but that is for future me to worry about.

Mamou is still on the plateau, but on a significantly lower tier, and near the edge of it at that. It is known as the “Gateway to the Futa Jallon,” as the paved road I am on runs from Conakary to Labé via Mamou. The ride is fun and very beautiful. There are still some hills to climb in this direction, and I hustle. The sun gets lower on the horizon, I eat some carrots, which turn out to be a great riding snack, and roll into Mamou as the sun is fully setting, riding through streets full of people thronging to roadside food stands to break their fast, with $1.11 still in my pocket. I should have given it to Mamadou.

*One note about the Jardin August Chevalier. I said yesterday all the species introduced by the French are gone save for the pines. This is not entirely true. I did some more reading yesterday and it seems to be the case that a number of Asian species they introduced are still around. But none of this is delineated in any way, and none of the other species in the pine forest are so obviously ornamental exotics that I was able to identify them as such.

**At some point someone introduced a species of Chinese bamboo that is absolutely enormous. It’s got to be some of the largest diameter bamboo anywhere, and it does quite well here, having taken over a tract of land near the abandoned restaurant.