Going into "the interior" has a 19th Century colonial air about it but it feels a bit like that in Guyana. There is a fairly thin coastal strip which is more or less modern - fields, roads, electricity, telephone, running water etc. As you go inland the trappings of civilisation gradually start to fall away until none are left. It's great in a way for eco-tourism, which is what we've been doing, but it can also bring problems, as we found on our trip.
We started at the Iwokrama field station, and were travelling with Aidan and Isabella, two scientists from Newcastle - Isabella is Iwokrama's 'resident' scientist - and a rain gauge which they were going to install at a ranch further south. Our first port of call was the Amerindian village of Rewa and "port" is the right word as you have to get there by boat. It's about three hours down the river Rupununi from the nearest road. But first you have to find the river, which is more difficult than it sounds. In the dry season it has a more or less defined channel, about 150 feet wide, but in the wet season it spreads into the surrounding forest until it is around two miles across. Mid-season, where we are now, it is somewhere in between and though nominally we were heading for Kwatamang landing in practice you just go along until the road gives out and the water is deep enough for the boat, which could be more or less anywhere. Then it's about an hour of the boat picking its way through the flooded forest, basically by trial and error, before (with luck) you get out to the main river channel.
Still, we got to Rewa all right and it proved a lovely peaceful place. There were the usual hikes, boat trips and other wildlife spotting activities (sightings included squirrel monkeys, golden-handed tamarins and a huge fish called the arapaima), but we also spent some time in the village. It was preparing for the big event of the year, the climax of Amerindian heritage month of September, where a team sets off for the regional centre of Annai to participate in various traditional activities. We saw the rehearsals/heats for various competitive events which do not feature in the Commonwealth Games, like cassava-grating, hand cotton spinning and fire-lighting.
From Rewa we went by boat to Karanambu, our next stop. It's a good seven hours. The boat had metal seats and was a bit crowded with us, all our luggage and the rain gauge so by the time we arrived our bums were aching. Karanambu is run by Diane McTurk, a game old lady from a long established settler family who now does somewhat western style eco-tourism and takes in foundling giant otters before they eventually return to the wild. Our first activity, naturally, was another boat ride, but it was interesting enough for us to forget our aching bums - some of the time anyway. We saw a huge heronry where thousands of herons of various sorts roost for the night, then saw some lilies open. I know that sounds like watching paint dry but in fact it's fascinating. They were the huge Amazon lilies - the ones with the great wide pads. During the day the flowers are closed up tight and look a bit like coconuts. At twilight they open up into big white classically shaped lotuses, aiming to attract the beetles which help fertilise them. The process takes about half an hour and you can just about see the plants moving and certainly see the bettles diving in as promised.
We then started encountering some of the downside of being out of communication; we didn't know whether or when we could leave for our next destination, Nappi, which is inaccessible in the wet season. Eventually we set off but were told it was too late to get in that night and had to go to Lethem, the frontier town on the Brazilian border which we had visited in January. We set off early the next morning to start the 2 1/2 hour walk in to the eco-lodge from Nappi village at dawn. Our luggage set off separately by ox-cart, trundling along by a different route but at about the same pace as us (fortunately we had left the rain gauge in Lethem). The North Downs Way it was not; most of the walk was a wade through thick mud and from time to time we had to cross streams, which meant a difficult choice between getting your boots soaked or taking them off and walking barefoot through the muddy bottom (sandals or flip-flops didn't really work as they got sucked off by the mud). Still, we got there, only to find there was no water so the only way to clean the mud off was in the creek beside the camp. We had a good day, though, with some nature-spotting treks through the jungle (spider monkeys, capuchin birds and a bright red cock of the rock) only to find on our return that we had to leave at 3.30 the following morning and do the 2 1/2 hour trek back in the dark because of a mix-up over our flight from Lethem. So we were feeling pretty dirty and tired by the time we caught the plane but at least we managed to get back to Georgetown, which at one point had looked very uncertain, and it's from there that we are posting this blog.
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