The Guianas

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Firstly we had to get there from Macapa, simples!! You’d think?? We had 2 seats booked for the 11 hour overnight trip to Oiapoque on the border. Unfortunately, we had been sold seats 46 and 47 on a 46 seater bus! Option 1, stay in Macapa and catch the bus the following morning (all at the bus company’s expense) or Option 2, stay on the bus, standing in the aisle for 11 hours and accept a refund as an apology? Bargain….we’ll take option number 2 please…. that was one tough journey!!! The trip was followed by a 2 hour wait for the striking Brazillian Police to open the Immigration office and a stunning taxi boat ride under the bridge which is built but is yet to open and finally, we arrived in French Guyana, Europe, strange…but true, in a way! We headed straight to the capital, Cayenne, desperately in need of bed! It’s not cheap here!!!!! I can’t say how much we paid for the Hotel as I don’t like to be reminded but it’s by far the most expensive of the trip so far but admittedly the most comfortable. Cayenne was very quiet. In the evening, things picked up a little when the local peeps headed to the Plaza Palmistas to visit the local food vans which offer a range of burgers and baguettes. The bars were quiet and ridiculously expensive but wiith the help of cheap supermarket rum, we still managed to get slightly plastered. On the Saturday morning, we visited the bustling market and tried Vietnamese Pho Soup which was different…nice, but different! On the Sunday we took a 2.5 hour coastal walk to a beach which had stunning scenery. We saw hatched turtle eggs and unfortunately a couple of dead baby turtles that didn’t make it…aw! We also saw a buzzard and a huuuge spider along with some really different species of plants and trees, including giant bamboo. All in all it was a pleasant trip to Cayenne if not a little on the expensive side.



Next up Kourou and a trip to the European Space Agency site, kindly organised by the French lady at our hotel. I say hotel but it was more like an apartment with it’s own kitchen, lounge area and an upstairs bedroom, it was like having a home rather than a room, albeit only for one day. This was escpecially useful as the town itself was nothing exciting, a little like Runcorn or Milton Keynes, no disrespect. The tour of the space agency was pretty cool, shame we hadn’t been able to time our visit to coincide with a launch, of which they manage about 10 per year. We visited the 3 different launch areas, Ariane 5, Soyou and Vega (we think). The control rooms were pretty fancy; think Apollo 13 but more modern.



In the afternoon we tried to make our way over to Saint Laurent on the border but due to a lack of information we ended up wandering aimlessly for a while until we were picked up by a very helpful local who took us up to the main road where we were told we could pick up a passing bus. After 4 hours during which time we only saw one bus which was full, we eventually hitched a lift in a van with a French girl - Virgini who was returning to Saint Laurent after her holiday in France. A real blessing as we’d started to fry at the side of the road. Hitching was not something we’d ever thought we’d do but in the circumstances it was the best option.



Saint Laurent was a little more up our street, better value and a little more of a small town vibe. Managed one night in the local hotel before having to move out into our hammocks due to the large number of cyclists who were staying in town for Tour de Guyane. We managed to catch a bit of Le Tour, the final sprint into the centre of Saint Laurent, great fun, some young lad from Martinique won. This was followed by a very long presentation ceremony and lots of freebies from the sponsers for the locals. The winner wore very tight cycling shorts (as he would) and was very popular with the ladies. Spending the night in the hammocks was much cheaper but the 40+ mosquito bites I got didn’t really make it worth while.



Next morning, armed with our newly acquired tourist cards, we left on a local boat taxi for Albina in Suriname. Very hectic, passports stamped and off we went, 3.5 bumpy hours to Paramaribo (or Parbo as the locals call it)



Parbo has some stunning Dutch colonial wooden buildings, it’s a real joy to explore, the buildings and the churches are fantastic. The modern part of the city is a little hectic but the UNESCO protected old area is really worth exploring. Apart from maybe Colonia, this place is top of the list for stunning architecture. Due to the fact that we had a pool in our cute hotel, the Alberto Aberga, we did very little here apart from relax and drink the local Parbo beer. Parbo beer is one of our favourites to date, they even did a stout…good effort. The language here is mind boggling, you get a reasonable level of English, plenty of Dutch and a bit of the jive sounding local language of Saranem Tonge, or all 3 mixed together! “Extra Koud Beer” (Really cold beer) and “Mi no abi moni” (I don’t have any money) were our favoutite expressions. We were sad to leave Parbo, it was somewhere we’d managed to get comfortable in a short space of time.



A quick stopover at Nieuw Nickerie near the border with Guyana and we got the chance to spend the day at Bigi Pan and also try some Indian food – not quite Zaikas but defo on a par with Rice n 3! Our trip to Bigi Pan was a real highlight, we started off with a boat trip down the Rio Nickerie and then onto the 8.5km canal which was crammed with lots of different birdies, we saw Anhinga, Common Egrets (huge!), tricoloured Herons, little blue Herons, Striated Herons, Yellow Crowned Night Herons, Scarlet Ibis (beautiful and sooo Scarlet you can’t miss them), Black Vultures, Ospreys, a Snail Kite, a Black Hawk, a Black Collared Hawk, a stunning Yellow Headed Caracara, White Crested Pintails, Wattled Jacanas, Greater Yellowlegs, Common terns, a Ringed Kingfisher (much bigger than ours at home), a Pied Water Tyrant, White Winged Swallows, Grey breasted Martins, Kiskadees, Turkey Vultures, Brown pelicans, Greater Ani, yellow Throated Spinetails, a Tropical Kingbird and the extremely noisy Carib Grackle. Apparently, our guide Stefanie told us, the area is a bit like the Everglades in the US. The coast is covered by mud-flats and we got chance to have a wade in the mud..great fun! All in all a really great day apart from tbe burnt knees!! We improved our birdspotting skills all thanks to our guide Stefanie and the beautiful book she kindly gave us.



The final country on this leg of our journey and 10^th so far on the trip was Guyana. We arrived on the ferry at Corriverton and took a long slooooow bus over to Georgetown, the Capital city. The Hostal backed onto the Magistrates Court and so our welcoming first impressions were of the local crims mouthing off at the guards before being taken away in handcuffs. Our second welcome was some dodgy bloke who wasn’t very pleasant to Mrs P whilst we we were out on walk in what was supposed to be the nice safer part of town, all within an hour of arriving!!



After a quick bite to eat and reaching the decision that Georgetown had nothing to offer us, we headed back to our digs, the Rima was a small,clean, basic but comfortable family run house and we slept the clock round. We managed to book ourselves onto the bus to lethem leaving the same day and so we spent our last couple of hourse exploring the local area and visiting the beautiful St Georges Cathedral –the largest wooden structure in the world apparently and the beautiful old library where we read a lot about the days of the slave trade and some of the heroes of the day who had stood up for their rights. Sadly, our main observation of Georgetown was the amount of litter in the streets and streams that run through the city, literally hundreds of plastic bottles clog up the waterways and the place had a generally neglected feel to it and the number of drunken men wandering along chunnering at us and themselves.



Night Bus to Lethem - The trip over to Lethem was a great adventure. We left Georgetown at 5pm on a 12 seater minibus and headed South. At the start of the trip, the roads were quite decent and after a quick stop off, we made good progress, After a couple of hours the road turned to a kind of dirt track and was a little on the bumpy side…to say the least! After several toilet and grub breaks, we stopped at 4am so that the driver could take a nap in his hammock, we were joined by a further 5 minibuses all completing the same trip. At 6, we were on the road again and over the River Essequibo on the local ferry at Kurupukari. Then the fun started!! We hit some really boggy mud roads and the journey turned into a rally driving adventure. We were first in the line and so unfortunately the first to get stuck in the mud despite our driver’s best efforts and revving the hell out of the bus. We had to take our boots and socks off and get into the mud to push the van out!! Definitely different! All the other buses managed to get pulled through by a truck which turned up. A little later and another of the buses got stuck but this time he was in deep and couldn’t be pushed free. Everyone got off their buses and the drivers sent one of their lads round the side of the mud with his bus to see if he could get round the side and hopefully drag the stuck bus out; that bus got stuck too!! Our driver tried another route around the side and nailed it. All attempts to drag the stricken bus out of the mud failed miserably but thankfully a landcruiser 4x4 turned up with a winch and pulled both buses free, buses 3,4 and 5 made it through and we held our breath as the final bus attempted to get through….fail!! Thankfully, the 4x4 had hung around and with one last rescue mission, we were on our way. This was going to be a long ride!! Over 20 hours after leaving Georgetown, we finally arrived in Lethem – numb cheeked!! A helluva journey but not one that we’d like to repeat any time soon.



Over the Border and back into Brazil, we stayed in Boa Vista and probably the crappest “hotel” in town (or even the whole of South America). The Guianas had been different, some good and some not so good but we were glad to have visited them. Suriname was definitely our favourite - Paramaribo a real gem and our day out at Bigi pan one of the highlights.

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