A long gap as we spent the best part of May outside Guyana, mostly in the USA, for nephew, Martin's wedding and in Penny's case getting up to the snow in Yosemite. June has been pretty wet but not noticeably cooler. Luckily most of the rain, which can be very heavy, occurs at night and occasionally wakes us up, as it is also very noisy on the corrugated tin roof (the usual roofing material here). Georgetown was beautifully laid out by the Dutch, with plots (a few acres each) separated by canals and drainage channels. On the outskirts they have been colonised by enormous lilies (the pads are used as plates - like banana leaves - at Hindu celebrations), so defeating their purpose, but becoming rather beautiful. That, and the cows and goats grazing on the verges, gives the area around us a very countryfied feel, more so as there are some houses with chickens and cows in their back yards, in a mainly residential area, with posh villas besides shacks that look like allotment huts, nearly all on stilts, the traditional method of building to cope with the floods. They did dredge out some of the channels after the first bout of heavy rain in April, but the vegetation has grown back within weeks.
As with a lot of things in Guyana, there are some upsides to the inefficiencies and lack-lustre economy. In many ways the rainforest is safer with no pressure of population and near impossibility of getting to it, It's a pity that the Guyanese lose out in order to keep it that way
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