December 27
Today we went to Kaieteur falls, the highest single drop waterfall in the world. It is located on the Guyana Shield, one of the world's oldest geological formations. Legend has it the "Kaie", one of the great Patamona chiefs sacrificed himself by paddling his canoe over the falls to appease Makonaima, the great spirit, and to bring peace between his people and the aggressive Caribs. "Teur" translates as "falls", hence the name Kaieteur.
We arrived at a small national airport at 10 am and had to weigh in to make sure the small 8-seater plane wasn't overloaded! It was an hour flight over untouched, virgin rainforest, which was beautiful. We could see the Pakaraima mountain range, then saw the falls from the air. We took a three hour hike that included 4 different views of the falls, and a great interpretation of the wildlife and culture of the area from our tour guide.
I asked our tour guide what he studied in university, and he said that he only was in school till the age of 13 and then had to go out and work to help support his family. He worked in the mines for a few years as a cook. He told me that one day he had to cook a tapir and said that he felt bad about it. He decided that he wanted to do something with his life to help the environment. So, he became a tour guide at the Kaietur National Park and now teaches people about the plants and animals in that area. He hasn't had any more formal education, but he was a wealth of knowledge on the area; a really great guide. He said one time he was part of a group of people that was planning on protesting in front of the Ministry of Agriculture against the illegal trade of wildlife. He showed up with his sign, and turned out that out of all the people that had planned to go, he was the only one. He said he stood out there for a few hours by himself, anyways!
Chico (our guide), was telling us about the mining industry in the area. Mining has become an important industry for Guyana. There is gold and diamond mining in the country, and a lot of men move to the mines to save money for awhile and bring it back to support their families. Miners are called "pork knockers", and the origin of that name is not entirely sure. However, one idea is that it began when the men were done with a long shift in the mines and came back into the towns. At the first house they would stop, they would usually knock on someone's door and ask for pork. Therefore, people refer to miners as "pork knockers". While we were at the falls, we ran into a couple porkknockers and took their picture at the top of the waterfall.
In that area there is a lot of amazing wildlife. One of them is the giant bromeliad, inside of which lives the golden frog. The endemic Kaieteur Golden frog, also known as the "poison dart frog", spends its entire life in giant bromeliads (many are five to ten feet tall.) The frog benefits from the good hiding places among the leaves and the pools of water that collect at the base of the leaves. The poison comes via eating insects which have, in turn, eaten certain plants containing the toxins. Indigenous people collected poison from slime that oozes from the skin. The poison is used on blowgun darts and arrows. We also saw the cock of the rock, a beautiful rare orange bird, with a large crest on its head. http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/resources.cfm?id=cock_rock
A really great thing about these waterfalls is that you can go right above them, and look down over the falls. It is a bit scary, but completely safe if you are careful. Look at the pictures to see what I'm talking about. Here is a website for the park: www.kaieteurpark.gov.gy
Traveling back you can see Georgetown from a distance, including the rivers and the ocean. The ocean in Guyana is actually quite murky and muddy and the reason is because of the Amazon River. The river actually deposits a lot of silt that it picks up throughout its journey through South America and it comes out right at the bottom of French guyana. The silt travels all the way up to Surinam and Guyana, resulting in a very murky oceanfront in Guyana.
I was looking at different websites, and found this one on Festivals in guyana, which I thought was interesting:
http://www.guyana-tourism.com/Festivals.html
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