Sunday, April 26, 2009

I'm a fancy rum girl!

I'm a girl who prefers amoretto sours to basically any other drink, so I wasn't sure what to expect from the tour of the El Dorado rum factory.  Copious street billboards told me it was the 'best rum in the world' so I had to check it out.

The distillary says it has tours but that mostly means that when people come, the head 
chemist/brand ambassador/head taster walks you around for a few hours.  This guy, Carl, just desperately wanted to share his love for rum with us.  We walked through the distillery (which smelled pretty disgusting) and learned about yeast and fermentation.  He answered all my annoying questions like "what happens if a bird poops in the open vat as it distills?"

We then checked out the warehouse "Are there ever any fires in here?  Would it blow up?"

And lastly we got to the tasting part!  I now know the difference between 5 year, 12 year, and 15 year El Dorado rum.  Five year is what we drink in bars, 12 year is "full" and to me is therefore nasty, and 15 year is "smooth" which to me is delicious.  We tried the single malt made in the wood stills and I wasn't too into it.  Sadly, he didn't let us taste the 25 year but that's probably because there are only four bottles available right now in Guyana and they cost $200 bucks each.  The best part by far was the creme liqueur.  Mmmm... new obsession.













"You are now entering a hard hat area-- but only if you're Laura or Shaan, no one else should wear a hard hat"














Mmm. delicious vats of yeast.














Open tanks of rum, ready to be bird-pooped in.


















Shaan, a hard hat, and a wooden still.


















Carl explaining how lucky we are that they are cleaning the wooden still for the first time in 20 years so we get to see the inside.


















The warehouse.














Tasting time...














Mmmm...













ho hum...

















yummy deliciousness

Bartica

Last day in Guyana so we went down to Bartica, largely just to ride the speed boat there. However an unintended highlight was that we could sing to Soca songs the whole carride to Parika before we jumped on the boat.  

We played that time-honored game of "how many people can you fit in a small boat".  The driver was basically sitting in my lap...



























Bartica is the sight of the most delicious thing I've eaten in Guyana-  Vegetable cook-up with pumpkin:













Too bad I'm not three people and couldn't finish this whole thing...

Bartica is also the sight of the worst toilet I've ever had to use to date (worse than Amanda's in Fes and the bug colony in Chiang Mai).  I didn't take a picture to spare you and am weirdly reluctant to describe it in case any of you (read: Dave and Supna) would never forgive me.


Friday night

We had legendary plans for my last Friday night in Guyana (and my first one not spent on a bus).  I think we pretty successfully hit most of the major spots but left a little so there's something fresh if I return.

Dip Lime- First to the bougie diplomat happy hour for some chatting and group mobilizing. 

Windy's- Next to Windy's because they have the only 2 for 1 happy hour in Guyana... except we missed it.  Instead food, Banks, and kareoke.

UCCW (or some other combination of letters).  This was the club for a workers union and consisted of old local people dancing to a live band playing oldies.  It was awesome and I got to dance with a 60 year old, overweight Guyanese man and observe the seasoned dance moves of old Guyanese ladies in very tight clothing.

Buddy's- This place is ridiculous.  It's four stories: a club, a pool hall, a gym, and Chinese
 restaurant.  I never made it out of the club part.

Shaan's Apartment- Relaxing and eating Reese's Whipps, which are basically Reese's that taste bad because the delicious dense peanut butter part is replaced with light fluffy brown 'whip'.  However, it wouldn't be the end to a night in Georgetown without eating Reese's Whipps... AKA the only thing in Shaan's refridgerator.


Friday, April 24, 2009

Kareoke

Why is kareoke the most fun thing to do anywhere in the world?
Also, why do I look so ridiculous doing it?
These things I may never know...


So it's Friday night and there is a packed itinerary of places we're going one of which includes a kareoke bar for which I am told last night was a "warm up".

Most importantly I have enlisted Sonja (pictured) to teach me how to do the Guyanese Whine. I'd put a link but the only youtube video was of an animated hippo in a sumo outfit doing it... so not really authentic.

Should be epic.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Favorite Soca Songs

Soca music is sort of fantastic. Here are my favorite songs:

Biting Insects


Lyrical excerpt:
if you live in the country
it aint easy
soon as you take off your clothes
and your body exposed
feeling nice and sexy
the biting start immediately

too much biting insects
biting insects
too much biting insects
biting insects

Listen

Uneasy

Lyrical Excerpt:
something strange is happening to me
I've been watching it recently
took my time to dress this morning
everything was neatly fitting
but now you are here next to me
clothes fitting uncomfortably
I feel uneasy in me pants
I feel uneasy in me pants

Listen

Museums

So it was my first full day in Georgetown (weird) and I did a little sniffing around. After sleeping absurdly late (this is vacation!) and taking a lovely scrape-off-all-the-sunblock-and-bug-spray shower I hit the road.

First stop was the Anthropology Museum. I was the only person there aside from a few guards. It was interesting but gave you a very unsatisfying amount of information-- like photographs of people with no dates, locations, or description of what is going on and lots of labels like "this piece of wood is used for [insert Amerindian word that you don't know]."

Then I started walking. I went through one of the markets (the one that is supposed to be safer for white girls walking solo) which was interesting. Didn't stop to buy anything because the layer of staring men was a little too thick. It was so ridiculously hot. I managed to make it to my destination but am not sure I'd do it again when a taxi costs a buck fifty.

The Catallani house is basically a big mansion with artwork in it. 80% of the paintings were by the same guy, Philip Moore. Again I was the only person in the museum and a guard followed me through each room. Not the most relaxed viewing experience but interesting none-the-less. They insisted that I sign the guest book which makes sense since there were no more than two visitors listed for each day.

The low volume at the museums perplexes me since they were both free and shaded. What else could you want?

Orindiuk Falls














Second stop on the waterfall journey was Orindiuk Falls which is a sequence of smaller falls where you can frollick in the water. Despite every class on infectious disease I've taken and my obsessive knowledge of helminths I got in the water. The midday sun was excruciating and it was so refreshing.

















Eat your heart out Sports Illustrated (normal-sized women, full-coverage) Swimsuit Edition













Brazil was just on the other side of the river! I was really tempted to try to swim across just so I could touch Brazil and come back, but it wasn't allowed :(

Kaiteur Falls

Kaiteur means “Kai falls” and is named after a chief who sacrificed himself for peace. The way the guide told the story “the Amerindians were peaceful, loving people, but the Caribs were warring and carnivorous” so Kai decided canoeing over the waterfall was the best show of leadership in tough times.













The pilot flew us by the falls a few times on each side so we could get pictures.













When the plane landed we went to three different spots to see the falls. The first one gave us a distant view.













The next one was up closer.













I destroyed my clothes by laying down on my stomach off the cliff to get a better view—totally worth it.













While everyone else was taking pictures, a guy on my tour proposed to his girlfriend right in front of the falls. I saw him down on one knee and her sort of freaking out and managed to get a picture of the moment from afar.


























And finally we were right next to the falls. I managed to get the guide to let me go down on the second ledge to look.






































He then proceeded to take pictures of me from every angle…


This other guy on my tour was really into drinking the waterfall water (ew). He first drank some, and then encouraged his son to drink it and then filled up a water bottle, at which time the true brown color of the water was most apparent, and then drank that.

Laura Frye, Co-Pilot

So the other 'big thing to do' in Guyana is Kaiteur Falls which is supposedly the highest single drop fall in the world (which a few other countries also claim to have). It's in the interior and the only way to get there is by plane (unless you hike for a week). The planes to Kaiteur run only when there are enough people to fill them so I've been calling agencies to see who has pulled together a tour and after a lot of rejection I finally found a group that was going and had one seat left...

Everyone kept telling me I was so lucky to get the last seat... they didn't tell me the last seat was the copilot's seat. This seemed sort of cool to me at first until I realized that if I was in the copilot's seat then there was no copilot. So, being me, I dreamt up all the health issues that could suddenly incapacitate the pilot, requiring me to fly the plane. I spent the hour ride carefully observing every dial he touched, trying to figure out which were the essentials if it should come down to it.

So I was totally engrossed in observation as he turned this knob and pulled this lever. This is a small propeller plane and we were going through the rain forest so it got a bit bumpy and at one point we hit a major bump and my instinct was to grab on to something but the only thing in front of me was the steering wheel (or whatever it's called). Bad move :( Thankfully I did not cause our demise but did try to hit on my hands for the rest of the trip.













Our plane













Co-Pilot!













After hours of observation, I can now tell you what three of these dials is for.













Clouds, rare-Guyananese puffy white clouds.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Oops

I have been out of the office life for five days now and I have gotten measurably dumber. The types of incorrect spellings that I'm catching in these blogs are disturbing! I'm mixing up homonyms and just spelling things atrociously. Is it that I actually write this way but Microsoft Word has a brilliant spell check or has my brain started to atrophy? Like maybe I can either remember bird calls or how to spell? Anyway, I've caught some embarrassing errors but am sure others remain so please excuse my egregious errors. I promise I'll relearn writing in English when I get back.

On the road again

The bus ride home managed to be both shorter than the one to get to the interior, yet way more eventful.

The road in the interior is comparatively nicer further north and the drivers used this as license to drive at unconscionable speeds through the forest. There was nothing to hold on to aside from the curtain on the window so Shaan and I just sort of stared in amazement and hoped that we wouldn't tip over. Our bags kept falling off the ceiling rack when we took sharp turns. I guess they were trying to make good time in anticipation for a problem, which we hit...

A big truck full of wood got stuck in the mud and blocked the road. We got off to check it out and watched one of those infuriating scenes of indecision and inefficiency.

Note that this is a timber truck, so there is no shortage of wood to put under the wheels of the truck in order to get it out of the mud. Yet no one attempts any solution.














First some chatting













Then the first Mack truck arrives













The truck drivers join and now it's time to tell jokes!













More Mack trucks, yet no one does anything

An hour passes. At this point Shaan and I have come up with four different feasible ways to get out of the mud. Yet no one really seems concerned that it's going to get dark and we're just chilling on the road.













Then on the horizon comes our savior. notice the group of people back there- one of them is the driver of our bus, another is the driver of the stuck truck... not even anywhere near the problem.













And finally the truck gets towed out!
Yay!

Substantial Sandwich

When we were booking in Georgetown for the trip to Iwokrama (which was nearly impossible given that Iwokrama does not have phones) they assured us that when we arrived they would have a lunch packed for us consisting of a ‘substantial sandwich’. Here’s what we got.

This is a double decker sandwich. The first layer is egg. The bottom in peanut butter. This is 2000 calories and weighs about 3 pounds. Wow.

Godfather! Stepfather!

On the way home we had to stop and wait at the ranger station for the bus to come through. While sitting there, we basically just eavesdropped on the weirdest display of flirting ever. The worker there was flirting with someone over the radio and had the radio turned all the way up so we could hear. I probably understood only about 50% of the things that were said but they included:

“You gotta baby? He gotta father? I be the father! God father, stepfather, no problem!”

Turtle Mountain


We woke up and jumped on a motor boat down the river which was just delightful. I really love the feel of wind on my face and was happy as can be. Then we turned into a 'tributary' which was nothing more than a very small opening in the shoreline, with an arch of vegetation. We switched to paddles and wove our way through the narrow bit of water which reminded me of the setting for "Kiss the Girl" in the Little Mermaid except without the singing crab. Eventually we came to Turtle lake (which is only a lake when there is rain) and jumped out at the base of a trail.

Side note- All the trails we walk are cut by Lawrence and his friend on days when there are no guests at the Field Station.

We started hiking and walked for about four hours until we reached the summit of turtle mountain and were able to look down on the whole canopy of the rainforest. It was breathtaking and my photos do not do it justice in any way. Then we had chatting time with Lawrence which was equally pleasurable.

We learned about a guest who went off into the woods by himself and got lost and caused a huge panic at the Field Station and teams of workers had to go out and look for him. Turns out, it's a guy working in Georgetown who Shaan knows...

We learned about felling trees which is fascinating to me. Apparently, half of Iwokrama National Park is entirely protected and no logging or hunting is allowed. On the other half, only sustainable logging is allowed. Basically this consists of first mapping every tree in an area and then only felling the ones that 1) won't leave a hole in the canopy 2) won't take others trees down with them if they fall 3) isn't within 30 feet of another tree that has been cut down. Looking at the size of these trees is seems impossible to plan how to extract one without destroying everything around.

The trip down was faster and ridiculously hot. But totally peaceful.

















This is my weird "I"m at the top of a mountain" face













And this is my shoe to prove I'm in this picture

Nighttime Wildlife Spotting- On Foot

So the nighttime wildlife spotting on the boat was really fun so we decided to do the same thing on foot. It seemed like a great idea and then as we were doing it, I realized that it was absolutely petrifying. We basically just walked into the rainforest with Lawrence and a flashlight.

Things that went through my mind:

-This trail is a loop, where is the half way mark so I know which direction is the shortest way out?
-There are only 246 people in Fair View Community, what are the chances that one of them is a psycho and in this forest too?
-What if Lawrence is epileptic? What if he has fainting spells? What if he has a heart attack? How will we get out?
-How funny would it be to turn off the flashlights and hide while Shaan is cleaning the fog off his glasses?
-What is crawling on my leg?
-Why does this feel like a scene from the Blair Witch Project?
-Animals are more scared of you than you are of them, right?

Rainforest Fun

One massive source of entertainment for me was a plant called "sensitive plant" which looks like a fern but if you touch it, it curls up and plays dead. It's pretty awesome. Touch it fast and not only will the leaves close but the whole branch will drop down. Touch it really lightly and you may succeed at getting only half of it to close. It reopens within 15 minutes for hours of fun!

Nighttime Wildlife Spotting- By Boat

So one activity we did was Lawrence was nighttime wildlife spotting. This consisted of getting a boat in the pitch dark with a really bright light and driving along the coast, shining the light to find animals. All nocturnal animals have shiny eyes so you can find them with the light (or at least Lawrence can find them). They also do that "deer in headlights" thing where once you shine the light on them they freeze and can't move [Dad: THARN]

We rode in a motor boat along the shore and in a really creepy sort of way the engine kept cutting out. I'm not sure what movie I am thinking of but all I could see was a scene of a poisonous snake dropping into the boat as we passed under trees.

So the other thing is that when the engine would cut out, we'd drift toward the brush on the shore and we would without fail hit a branch with a really large spider web on it. So that was awesome, swatting my way through spider webs. Ick.

We saw:
4 Caimon (think small alligator)
4 Snakes
2 Lavapacas (this is the word I hear when they say it but quite possibly not the actual name of this animal... if I had faster internet, I'd look it up)

Lawrence told us we were very lucky for so many sightings, particularly the lavapaca(?) which is basically the R.O.U.S from the Princess Bride.

I spent a large portion of the ride trying to figure out what I would do if the boat tipped over. Thankfully, it didn't.

Bird Noises

So I am not only enjoying myself on this trip but also learning some important skills. I can now differentiate between the noises of a howler monkey and a spider monkey (fun fact, howler monkeys howl and spider monkeys sound mostly like breaking branches that they are trying to throw at you). I also learned that the best way to find monkeys is to smell for their poop (which Shaan stuck his hand in by accident).

Birds are another area of budding knowledge. We are mostly familiar with the Screaming Piha which until we saw written down thought was the howling peehawk and the screeching peacock. Again, a few communication barriers. We mostly only heard the screaming piha and what we called "noisy bird" which has a much longer more descriptive name.

The field station was under construction so we heard most often the birds we named "steel-tipped drill bird" and "hammer hard bird". And we woke up every morning to "alarm clock bird" which was actually a bird, and not just our alarm clock-- and was nesting in the thatched roof of our cabin and liked to sing at 6 a.m.

Lawrence

Lawrence was our guide for our stay and he was a small, eager man who reminded me of Heart from Captain Planet. The resemblance was uncanny (as uncanny as resemblance between a real person and a cartoon can be when there is a 20 year age difference).

Lawrence grew up in Fair View Community and "got a little education in Georgetown". He attributes his nature knowledge to two trips he went on with his Grandfather to Georgetown by canoe (this predates the road and took weeks).

When he was 16 he went to work at the gold mines which is a hard life. He told us about all the cocaine, violence (he saw someone hacked to death with a machete over competition for a prostitute), and toxins he was exposed to. He also told a story of seeing one of his cousins as a prostitute in the bar and sending her back home to the village.

My favorite conversation with him was when he was telling us why he was a good guide and other people don't have the necessary skills. "See, if you're a guide you have to talk to people! They ask you questions! They always say 'Lawrence what do you think about this, Lawrence how do you feel about that' and you have to talk!" Haha- I forget how loud and talky Americans are :) It totally explains why Gabriel was so put off by us and our questions. Some people just aren't used to constant chatter :)

Random other fact- Lawrence's father died when a tree fell on him and a sharp branch went through his eye. I was a little paranoid about falling trees after that story.

Iwokrama Field Station

Iwokrama is a nature reserve that is huge and sparsely populated. I think they said 1 million acres (though I tend not to remember things like that accurately) and there is only one village --Fair View Community-- that has 246 residents. People were really insistent on the 246 number, no variation.

The basecamp has about 8 cabins, a main center, some dormitories for staff, and a place to sling a hammock. It is the base for the biologists who do research in the forest and while we were there, two dudes were posted there, one researching dung beatles (ew) and the other tree frogs.

They don't get tourists every day and when they do get them, they get an email alerting them about twelve hours in advance. They assign each group a guide who chills with them and takes them to do activities in the morning, afternoon, and night.

I thought it was a little pricey when we arranged the trip from Georgetown but I can totally see why... they have all this infrastructure and staff and no guarantee that anyone will come!

The place was beautiful with picturesque cabins and manicured lawns and the staff was fantastic and friendly. Totally recommend it to anyone who happens to be in the middle of Guyana.

Canopy Walkway

We were about three hours late due to the bus so we arrived at the Canopy Walkway during the hottest hours when the animals were all sleeping. Nonetheless, it was pretty sweet.

Basically, there were large metal (sorta) bridges that you can walk on swinging between the tallest trees in the rainforest. Only one person was allowed at a time and the trees up that high do sort of sway...

The view was great even though our guide was reticent. He answered questions with the fewest words and least information possible.

Laura "How long did it take to build the walkway?
Gabriel "A long time"

Laura "Is it a long way to the base camp?"
Gabriel "yes"

Laura "How did they choose which trees to use as the anchors?"
Gabriel -shrug-

I made a decision to feel safe despite all the questions in my brain like "how do they know these tress aren't going to fall?" and "did anyone draw a free-body diagram to ensure that there is enough support for our body weight up here?" and "what if the termites from that massive nest spent all of last night munching on the branch that the railing is tied to?"

Oh well.

Big Bus on a Little Ferry

We were on a full sized bus and we came to a river. Everyone had to get off and we all stood around to see how this was going to work.

A ferry, or more accurately a collection of empty floating crates covered by planks of wood with some sort of monstrous motor attached started to chug over to our side.

Looking at it you'd think "that bus is going to fit on that ferry?" which is exactly what myself and every other interior-first-timer did as we watched an incredibly unscientific yet amazingly successful process.

First two dudes jump down and start seemingly randomly placing cracking drift wood under the ferry ledge. Then they slide some 2X4s over top to make a ramp, but only a ramp big enough for the width of the tires of the bus, no margin of error. And then the bus BACKS onto the ferry. First try, it smashes into it, back up and tries again. Some planks are moved, and magically the second time it gets on.

The entire ride across the river I was calculating which direction I would swim in when the ferry sank...

P.S. Crossing the ferry in the other direction my fears were somewhat mitigated after the first success but then also enhanced by the woman who owns the bar nearby telling me how drunk the ferry operators were the night before...













Here come the "ferry"













Back that thing up













Oops, crashed a little













The perfect configuration of precarious logs













and we're off!