ajgaines - Part Time Pilot

Guyana – Worst Busride of My Life and Journey Into the Jungle

I woke up at Julian’s hotel feeling pretty good and ate my leftover Chinese food. David left around 11am and I just lounged around trying to figure out what to do as my waterfall trip had been cancelled. I eventually decided I would go deep into the jungle to a place called Iwokrama and stay at an “ecolodge” for a while. The prices at the ecolodge were really outrageous but I called and hassled them and eventually figured out that it’s only $30 for a “research bed” with a shared bathroom. That’s a lot cheaper than the $200 they put on their website for their tourist cabins. A lot of the pricing on stuff is really ridiculous around here and there’s a good deal of greed similar to Belize where you could pay the equivalent of a fortune for a 5 minute taxi if you don’t know what you’re doing.

My plan was to take a bus overnight to Iwokrama which I was warned many times that the bus ride would be miserable and that white people never do it. The bus guy told me to show up at 5pm to catch the bus. For the life of me I can’t understand why he wanted me to show up then. I soon found out it was scheduled for 630pm and we didn’t actually leave until well after 730pm. There was a lot of sitting and people not knowing or caring what was going on. It was $75 for a bus ride to Iwokrama. Same price if you’re going all the way to Lethen. I cannot understand how they can charge those prices. It was an absurdly small bus and they packed 14 people inside. It would turn out the be by far the worst bus experience of my life. The bus driver turned out to be an asshole who would point at you yell something and expect him to know what he was trying to say to you.

There’s one river crossing which is done on an old falling apart barge that carries about 12 buses across each crossing. You can cross as a pedestrian for free.

We were all trying to sleep and he blasted his Carribean gospel music. Blasted. I asked him to turn it down once because everyone was sleeping as I was sitting in the front so he could actually hear me. He didn’t say anything and turned it up a little. I sat next to this Brazilian dude who was a pretty nice guy and he got the shittiest seat in the house. The front middle. It rides 2 inches higher than everywhere else and slopes into the front passenger and driver seats. He chose to slope into my space which was unavoidable. Yes he was a nice dude. But I spent the whole ride with 90% of my sweating leg pressed against 90% of his. As our legs rubbed against each other, the Carribean gospel music blasted and I eventually started to fall asleep. Then for some reason the driver turned the AC on and put it to full cold. It wasn’t even hot anymore. I woke up shaking. I pointed at the AC and asked him to turn it down and he didn’t respond. I was literally hypothermic and it got worse and worse. I just used my cold weather training and sat there and tried to sleep as I lost feeling in my entire arms and legs. Once I finally got into another kinda sorta sleep with the Brazilians head bobbing it’s way closer and closer to my shoulder we hit the first police checkpoint.

Waiting in line at one of the many police stops on the way

I didn’t really know anything about these checkpoints but I quickly learned. The police are corrupt as f*ck. They took us all out of the truck lined us up in front of their little shack. They had masks on and the big officer yelled at the female officer that she didn’t do a good job lining us up. He wanted the people waiting to be further away from the hut. So he grabbed the German dude I had just met by the shoulders and shoved him back. He then called us in one at a time. I was up 3rd and went in, showed my passport. He shook my hand and said, “Hello American!” I said hello and he went into this weird thing about how most people bought him water. I figured he was asking for a bribe but his way of asking was super odd and I didn’t catch it at first. I pointed at his back and said you have water right there.. He said no! That water is empty when it clearly wasn’t. I just started to tell him I had no idea what he was talking about as he was a douche and I really didn’t know what he was talking about. He finally told me to get out so I went back to the van. I talked to the Brazilian a little who said that he made him pay $5 for passage, which is a pretty good chunk of money when there’s a police stop every hour down the road.

It’s such a dumb broken system I can’t write enough about it. These assholes are benefiting off of their own poor. At almost all the stations they asked me what I did for work and told me to get lost. They required bribes from the Brazilians and the local family that were traveling through when they clearly had nothing.

After freezing for hours and hours and having my ears blasted by his shit music I finally made it to Iwokrama. The driver threw my bag on the ground and didn’t tell me which direction the walk. The worst $75 I’ve spent in my life. There was a guy riding by on a motorcycle at the perfect time. I stuck my thumb out and he saved me about a 20 minute walk to the lodge.

I got to the lodge around 8am and soon found out that no one did what I was doing. It was all group stuff done by extremely rich people. To hike their favorite trail it was over $200!! Who can afford that? The canopy tour was $25 but $150 for transportation there. However, the guide who showed me around the complex was really cool. His name was Owen, he was 19, and he showed me the Caiman who swims around the river and is kind of the lodge’s pet in the dry season. I think his name was Saunker or something like that. He fed him a few innards and I watched him chomp them down. I thought Caiman were much smaller, this guy was clearly twice my size.

Caiman

I checked into my room which are two tiny twin beds where anyone’s feet would hang off the edge and promptly fell into a deep sleep. After the rough busride the sleep was delicious. It was the type of sleep you could eat, the kind where you wake up and feel like you just ate an entire delicious vanilla cake.

After shaking off the tired I went in and talked to some of the people working here a little more. I can tell they really never get people like me here. People just traveling on their own without a group so they didn’t really know what to say to me. The prices are so outrageous. I decided to walk into town, a tiny town called Fairview. The main guy here at the lodge said I should ask permission from the leader of the village first. I wasn’t really sure how to do that so when I got to the village and saw there was no one there I just walked down the street for a few minutes. I saw one woman airing out a carpet or something so I walked towards her intending to do the whole “take me to your leader” thing the guide suggested. She scurried off and I felt imposy so I walked back towards the road.

Village of Fairview from above

The very small village of Fairview. There might be 30 or so houses here.

Don’t ask me how a Guinness finds its way this far from home.

I ran into an old dude walking there and I asked him about walking through the village. He said it was totally chill but I didn’t really want to go back so I found this little store and bought a coke. They only had 1 liter bottles and though it was way too much I always try to buy something to support the locals. These two little kids showed up and I asked them if they wanted the rest of the coke. They were super shy and eventually their mom said yes and I gave them the bottle with some cups. They seemed a little excited but still wouldn’t dare to glance at me.I walked back to the lodge and though I was exhausted I felt like I wanted to do a few more things before the sun went down. I started hiking down one of the trails and after a while turned around. It was a little spooky thinking about all the leopards that are here. There was a spotting yesterday and I saw one at the zoo a few days ago and they are enormous.

I then rented a canoe and set off into the river and paddled all the way to “Indian Island.” The story is some Indian guy lived there and killed his wife there so that’s where it got its name. I knew there were Caiman in the river but didn’t fully realize what that meant until I was coming back and the sun was as such that I saw bubbles bubbling all around me. One group of bubble were absolutely enormous.

I canoed a little faster, got back to shore and decided that was enough for one day. Ps it was a very unstable and leaky canoe obviously made in the bush for the Bush. Got back. Took a shower and had the dinner at the lodge. I was literally the only person there. It was a little sad. A huge table set just for one. One plate, one fork. But Owen the guide hung out with me for part of it and I read my book for the rest. The food was good. It tasted like great homemade food. Some of the best homemade Mac and cheese I’ve had, decent fried chicken all washed down with passion fruit juice. But the price was an outrageous $23. I then read my book relaxed some, and crashlanded into my bed.

Canoeing in Caiman infested waters.

Indian Island. Living in paradise.

Guyana – Welcome to the 3rd World

After 2 months of suffering through pilot training in Miami’s frigid winter I finally finished my type rating for the Boeing 767. I looked at my schedule and saw that I had a full week off before any more training. And the training after the type ride is important but not tested like the type ride is. Before they had the opportunity to change my schedule I decided to hop down to Guyana which is about a 4 hour flight from Miami. It’s the first time in a long time that I’m visiting a new country. I guess I just wanted to catch another Pokémon after about 1.5 years of going to Vietnam. I also wanted to visit my buddy who dropped out of Atlas Air training and went back to Guyana where his wife Claudia and kid Renaldo live.

There’s now 2 American airlines flights in and out of Guyana every night. One from Miami one from JFK. Apparently Guyana has just gotten into the oil game with some offshore drilling and a lot of companies are monopolizing on that.

I got into the airport which reminded me a bit of Belize and the country comparisons to Belize would keep coming. Immigration was giving me problems for not having an address and return ticket and after asking me a bunch of times what the hell “jumpseating” was they finally let me pass. The lady was actually super nice and walked me outside the airport where I saw my buddy Chris! It was really good to see him and he drove me back to his place where we drank a few beers, he divulged all the Guyanese gossip, and we finally went to sleep around 3am. I woke up in the morning to one of the greatest breakfasts of my life. Chris’s Guyanese wife Paula cooked a smorgasbord of food including something called “breadfruit” which I never knew existed. It literally just tastes like bread that is a tiny bit sweet, but it is a type of fruit that grows in Guyana. It’s rather delicious. I also got to meet Claudia’s kid Renaldo who’s a super sweet little dude who was hashing out some book reports while I was there. I was still exhausted from the flight down but Chris put me in his car and we explored the town of Georgetown together. A reeeeeally strange place. The streets were lined endlessly with little market stands. It felt like being in Belize but a little more neat and organized, but everyone I looked at looked like they wanted to kill me. There are some enormous old buildings in town including one that is apparently the largest wooden building in the northern hemisphere(I still have to factcheck this), which isn’t as big as I thought it would be.

A street artist was carving these coconuts for only $2 each

Chris was super excited to show me the local pots.

Walking down the street I get a lot of people that stare at me. It feels a little unsafe walking around town but maybe that’s just because the place I checked into the guy that owns the place said one of his guests got stabbed 2 days prior on the street and another got stabbed as 2 people tried to take his motorcycle a month prior. It’s the first time on my travels that I left my phone in my room while journeying around town. Being a hardcore Google maps junkie I wasn’t sure if I would be able to find my way back. The girls in Guyana are gorgeous. Extremely voluptuous. From what I’ve noticed so far about Guyana is that there’s 2 large communities. A black community and Indian community. The black community seems to outnumber the Indian community but the Indian community seems to own more of the infrastructure. Most of the stores and restaurants are Indian owned. I keep hearing word of an upcoming election where each community is promoting their person. This is leading to a lot of tension here across the 2 communities, and I continually here rather racist comments from varying sides. Apparently each candidate is offering people money to vote for them. Money probably coated in oil.

I was certainly the only person taking a photo here as there are seemingly no other tourists

Local turt. There’s no where to swim so I really don’t know where they have turtles.

I checked into Julian’s hotel and restaurant which provided me a tiny room which is really just a bed, a chair, and a cold shower for $25. I was happy because the other hotels were all around $100 and I’m a cheap f*ck. I booked a tour to see the Kaeitur falls the famous local waterfall but that was cancelled almost immediately after booking. It was $215 for the flight to/from and about 3 hours staying there. I consistently heard the best tour agency was Evergreen Adventures (http://www.evergreenadventuresgy.com).

After resting a bit I walked around town. The entire city was a big market I think because it was Saturday. Everywhere I went there were people rolling around big speakers slamming subwoofers.

Some local “remedies.” God knows what’s in those bottles.

I went back to the hotel and ran into a Swiss guy named David who had just finished a bushmaster course in the jungle where you learn how to survive for a couple weeks and then they drop you off on your own for 4 days. Apparently he was the only one from his group that made it through the 4 days without pulling the plug. He was showing me his machete and some of the rope he made while bored during the 4 days. It instantly went onto my bucket list.

We drank a bottle of rum and started talking to another guy at the bar. His name was Andrei and he said he was a guide. I’m not totally sure if he really was but he said he was. He would call me multiple times every day afterwards. We drank a bunch more rum mixed with coconut water(I heard the name coco loco?). A pretty slimy drink but goes down easy. We got drunk pretty quickly and before long Andrei convinced me, David, our bartender and another person staying at Julian’s to go to a karaoke session. We arrived and it was a very small affair. There were 2 people there celebrating their birthdays so we sang happy birthdays between terribly sung songs. I sang country roads and wagon wheel and was surprised to find that some people sang along to country roads. Drinks were about $2.50 per drink. I ran out of money real quick as I tactically only brought a tiny bit.

Eventually we left the place and jumped into a taxi. We heard some amazingly loud music and asked the taxi to drive towards it. When we got to the music we saw 1000 people walking around at 2am with construction clothes on. Apparently there was this enormous thing called “construction party” where everyone dressed up and they had a bunch of old construction vehicles littered around the dance area. When we got there everyone was already leaving but I went and stood in front of the speakers and they were unspeakable loud with slamming bass. We left and retired back to our hotel rooms. I rested before my trek into the jungle.

Laos Day 17: Weird Run-In With Local and Visa Problems

Rough day again today. Starting in Pak Beng I left around 11 am. I’m not sure why I keep starting so late, I think I just BS around before breakfast.

Anyways, as I got near Muang Xai I pulled off to the side of the road once to relax a little bit. There were some old abandoned selling booths for fruits or market days or something and I lay down on one and tried to relax a little.

Within a minute I heard a motorbike and looked up to see some dude on his motorbike. I thought it was just a guy dying to practice some English so I was a little excited at first. We were talking about what I was doing here and where I was driving. When we hit the end of the road of his English he asked “if I want to” and then made a blowjob symbol. I was blown away. Not in a million years would I have guessed that was coming. I laughed and said no and lay back down. Then he kept asking me and would say, “sir,” “just a little,” “you’re handsome.” I got angry and yelled no and pointed at the road. When he still wouldn’t leave I stood up holding the helmet aggressively and started walking towards my machete.. I thought I had heard him say something when he was driving up the little hill and I was suddenly worried there was someone else and I was about to get nabbed. He finally jumped on his motorbike as I grabbed the machete.

I rode off too and kept watching my back as I made the long ride. I messaged my visa letter guy about trying to get a visa on arrival when I got to the border with Vietnam and thank god that I did because he warned me that that was not possible. This was a huge hit to my journey. I realized that instead of going straight and into Vietnam tomorrow morning I would have to drive all the way to Luang Prabang again to get a visa at the consulate. This is about a 200km drive out of the way.

There’s a lot of tourist guides like these riddled around the country. Some of them are pretty funny

Instead of thinking too hard about it I just started driving as apparently the best time to go is Monday morning and it was Saturday night. I had remembered a guesthouse that actually had wifi and seemed nice on my way up from Luang Prabang so I set my sights on that. After driving in the pitch black for 2 hours and eating 10000 flies I finally made it. I am here now and it looks as if they had a wedding here today which is kind of nice. I’m 1.5 hours out of Luang Prabang. I want to get there before the consulate opens at 8am so I guess I will leave here around 530 to be sure. If all goes smoothly I can ride a lot tomorrow and maybe take a break near the border of Vietnam!