Work and Play in Georgetown

the view from our balcony

We've now had two weekends in Georgetown, and have probably exhausted its entertainment options. Today's choice, the Princess Hotel (formerly Buddy's International)by the main cricket stadium, had a good size swimming-pool, but also ghetto-blasters. On Saturday we had a fruitless search for a heavy frying-pan, along the main shopping street, and found the 'foreigners' supermarket, and a wilting but fresh cauliflower. So we are managing an approximation of home cooking and early evening walks along the seawall (though today at high-tide the sea was sloshing over). For the archivists among you, the Iwokrama archive is fairly rudimentary and has so far been treated as a library system, so some challenges there too..

Georgetown

We're settling in, more or less, in Georgetown. Some things are proving fairly easy - like finding the flat (with Atlantic views, though you can't really swim as it's full of river silt); some are a bit more difficult - like opening a bank account which we haven't managed yet. Our neighbours are mostly expats, but not European - the majority are from other Caribbean countries and work in the Caricom secretariat here. Anyway, for a while we will be more settled than in the jungle or savannah - we'll try to post some pictures of us there, looking less than settled, but at the moment the internet is resisting.

Tour of the South

We've been round most of the south of Guyana since our last post. We visited part of the Iwokrama forest where Penny is going to work and walked along their canopy walkway, seeing parrots, toucans and the like. The second time we went we were helped (or hindered) by the presence of some serious American birders; they had all the right equipment so we had a look through their telescopes at tiny spots in the distance which turned out to be Guinness like toucan. They also had numbered lists to tick off in the evening (a bit like a Chinese restaurant - "OK, we got a 179 and a 218 this morning"). We then went off to an Indian village in the savannah and had a night camping in hammocks(fairly comfortably) in the jungle, having a go at fishing (not very successful but we saw some giant otters), shooting with Indian bows etc. From there we went to the savannah in the deep south, miles away from anywhere but managed some horse-riding (again, not very successful - pix to follow, we hope) saw a giant ant eater and swam in the creeks. We're now back in Georgetown trying to install ourselves in house, job etc. After a week in the country Georgetown,which had seemed very provincial when we arrived, now seems far too big and noisy!

Here we go again

Hi everyone
So we´re back on our travels, appreciating the 30 degree rise in temperature over the last two days, if not the 26 hour journey, which included 4 hours with stranded Brummies in Bridgetown airport, two changes of plane and abbreviated nights camping out at the Westminster flat beforehand and at the airport hotel in Port of Spain on Saturday night.
On a softies´adventure tour for the first ten days (we briefly met up with some misguided souls, who were paying to do a jungle survival course, involving 3 days fending for themselves, a sort of iron John meets I´m a (non) celebrity). We´ve already done two journeys in 10 seater planes over the rainforest canopy: on Sunday, the day we arrived to Kaietur falls and Monday to a lodge on the savanna in North Rupununi (with apparently, the only swimming pool in the region). Reminiscent of Sri Lanka in many ways including troops of schoolchildren in immaculate uniforms and bare feet, and lush jungle landcape. The guides have all trained at Iwokrama, the centre Penny will be working for, and we are off to see the place itself, or the canopy walkway part on Tuesday.