December 19th, Tuesday
4:30 am early departure. The caravan of three cars arrived at our house, loaded up. We have our own jerry cans of fuel, rubber boots, a chainsaw (in case of any trees blocking the roads), insect repellent, a satellite phone, flashlights, a winch on one of the trucks (in case we get stuck in “potholes”) and our bags. I’m so lucky mine is so light- barely any clothes in there! Haha! We are traveling with the US Ambassador and his family, the Director of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Guyana, my parents (my Dad is Guyana Peace Corps Director and my Mom works at the US Embassy) and three drivers.
Georgetown is the capital of Guyana, a country of only around 700,000 people. Most of the population lives in the capital city and along the coast, and there are about as many Guyanese living in New York City as there are in Guyana. An estimated 60% of the land is still untouched virgin rainforest. I will provide some insight into the country through my experiences, but if you want more detailed background into the country, you can go to this site:
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/south-america/guyana?
After about 2 hours traveling south out of Georgetown, we passed through the town of Linden, which houses a huge bauxite mine with Canadian private company involvement. Here is more about bauxite: http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/minerals/bauxite.html.
At 11:30 am we arrived at a ferry crossing, on the other side of which we were picked up by boat to go to the Iwokrama Field Station. Here we received a guided tour of the facilities and heard about their work. The Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development manages the nearly one million acre (371,000 hectares) Iwokrama Forest in central Guyana to show how tropical forests can be conserved and sustainably used to provide ecological, social and economic benefits to local, national and international communities (information obtained from the website: www.iwokrama.org).
We learned about the initiatives they are working on to assure proper maintenance of the forest, along with some of the native plant and animal species in the area. One of the most interesting is the arapaima fish, the largest scaled freshwater fish in the world. http://www.iwokrama.org/forest/animals/arapaima.htm. Look in the pictures for an image of the skeleton of a real arapaima (just the head). There are also about 90 species of bats in the area, caimans http://www.iwokrama.org/forest/animals/blackcaiman.htm, giant otters: http://www.iwokrama.org/forest/animals/giantotter.htm, anacondas, bushmasters, turtles and more (check out the website- there are many more!). We had lunch and continued on to Surama, an Ecotourism Inn where we would spend the night.
The drive was on clay roads, through the lush rainforest, one of the two main roads in Guyana. Nearing Surama, we emerged into the open savanna lands, surrounded by the Pakaraima Mountains. Here is a website on this Amerindian village: http://www.wilderness-explorers.com/surama_village.htm
Here we had a meeting with members of the community and the Peace Corps Volunteer living in the village, working on Health initiatives with the community. They graciously welcomed us to their village with a beautiful presentation of some of the local songs and dances of their people. “Amerindian” is the term used for the indigenous peoples of Guyana, similar to “First Nations” in Canada, and “Native Americans” in the United States.
One of the health problems in this area of the country is malaria, a disease found in the more interior parts of the country. Guyana has done great work in decreasing the cases of the disease over the years, but there is a push to continue bringing the number of cases down. One week before my trip I had to take one pill a day to prevent malaria. I continued during my stay in the interior and continue taking one a day for four weeks after my trip.
After a wonderful presentation, we had a great dinner with mashed yams and Agouti Paca, in Creole, named Laba. You can see a picture of it here: http://www.iwokrama.org/mammals/guides/laro0.html
We returned to the wooden framed houses with thatched roofs that were our rooms, turned out the kerosene lanterns, crawled under our mosquito nets and called it a day.
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