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.

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