Guyana - Part Time Pilot

Guyana – Boat Tour at Iwokrama, Life Lessons from a Guyanese Woman

I woke up bright and early to go on my boat tour. It was still pitch black out and the howler monkeys were still screaming as I wiped the drool off my shirt and fell out of bed.

They gave me a bit of a deal on the boat tour, sending Owen and captain Manny with me to explore the petroglyphs and rapids and then touring around Indian island for $33.

The “petroglyphs” are 6000 year old markings resembling animals made by the ancient people that lived here. There’s one that’s supposed to be a monkey and the ones near the rapids were mostly swirls signifying the rapids of the area.

Manny taking a nap

We boated by “Michelle’s Island,” and I would eventually run into a woman named Michelle and figure out she was the one who owned the island. The journey around Indian island was a little boring but the scenery was gorgeous. There was no wildlife that we could see other than some big green parrots that would squawk overhead.

Once Owen, Manny and I got back I was told there was a car going into the local village and I could go if I liked. This sounded a lot better then when I had just stumbled around on my own. I jumped in the car and headed to town with Owen. We walked around the airport and through part of town. The runway reminded me of Alaska and they had paths across the runway across the whole thing. People just walked across without a care, just like Alaska.

The runway in the middle of town, and us right in the middle.

We walked by the school and the kids were super shy they all ran away. I walked up to the school poked my head in and tried to talk to a few of the kids and the teacher who were all doing a lot of nothing. But I only got one kid to tell me his name. When I started leaving the teachers were rounding all the kids up to say a prayer or something as they were yelling at the kids to put their hands into prayer shape.

We walked further through the town and got back to the road. At the road there were a huge group of kids who were swimming on cut vines. They were having an awesome time even though they were supposed to be cleaning up trash.

We walked to the ranger station and stopped at the restaurant across the way to see if they had food that I could get later. I was trying to avoid the outrageous $23 meals at the lodge. This guy started yelling a lot at me and Owen and ran out to meet us. He was a thick ball of energy, stumbled down the stairs and was sweating through his hat. He threw his sweaty hand at me and introduced himself as sergeant. Then said he was a mad ranger and a bunch of other things that I couldn’t understand. The dude was shit faced at 1030 and bragging about being an amazing ranger who could do whatever he wanted. This supported the image I had of authority here in Guyana on my trip so far. He was sitting with the police officers but the officers seemed composed and it didn’t look like they were drinking quite as much as him if at all.

Owen and I walked back to the lodge and I promptly took another delicious nap. All the hiking makes napping so easy and majestic.
I sprung out of bed and decided to do the bushmaster hike on my own.

It took about an hour and took me through a lot of thick jungle. It was pretty terrifying. I could hear some large animals just past the brush that I couldn’t see. You can literally only see about 6 feet into the brush in most places. One animal sounded particular big, one shrieked really loud, and a bunch of birds would wait till I was 2 feet away to aggressively flap their wings and fly off, terrifying. I finished the hike, got back, grabbed a few things and wanted to go eat at the local restaurant I saw the ranger earlier. By the time I got there there was no one there. I knocked on the little wood window and no response. After a few moments a woman walked up and I asked if she worked there or if I could get food there. She was super sweet and said that she was Michelle and she cooked food but on the other side of the river. She eventually told me she would cook for me and boat me back to the lodge for just $5.

This is exactly the adventure I came for so I screamed yes. We jumped on the bus barge and after watching a bus break down and literally 21 people came out of this tiny bus. A bus that is supposed to fit 9… We watched 21 Haitians climb out. Michelle mentioned they were running from issues in Haiti and fleeing for Brazil but the Brazilians are extremely racist against them and many of them get shot and buried.

The ridiculous process they have of transporting buses

They fixed the bus and an hour later we crossed the river. It was already getting dark and I was seeing that my chances of getting back across the river were slim as the water is Caiman infested, there are rocks everywhere, and closest light is 200 miles away. But Michelle cooked me roti with chicken curry and it was some of the best food I’ve ever tasted.

She even gave me extra. She told me all about Guyana and the issues here. How she felt she needed to beat her daughter when she caught her looking up riskay stuff on the internet, how her husband got diabetes, how her husband’s boss is an asshole and wants him to work at a barge further from her so they can’t be together, and how her other daughter is 32 and isn’t married yet. She was such a sweet lady but continued some racist sentiment towards black people saying things like, “black people will only run away from 2 things, the police and iguanas.”

Apparently she rented out some cabins on her island and I sorely wished I had known that sooner so I could have stayed there instead. The owner of the Iwokrama lodge bullies her about trying to get some of the tourist money that comes through here. But I’d much rather it go to her than that selfish dude. Eventually we finished eating and it was pitch black out. She said she knew someone else with a boat and made a phonecall. I pondered on if I wanted to boat through Rocky Caiman infested water but I figured I could give it a shot and if we fell into the water that would be a hell of an adventure!

We went down to the boat landing where a guy named Paully was waiting for his nieces to pick him up on their boat. That was my ride too so I waited with him, talked to him for about 10 minutes and realized he didn’t understand a word I was saying. His nieces showed up and boated me back. They lived on Indian island where I had kayaked to the day before. I paid them $3.50 and they went on their way. Awesome people.

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.