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Published: August 7th 2007
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Up close and personal
Makes you feel so small 5-24
Hotel: Sleep Inn International, Georgetown, Guyana, $65
The next morning Dean and I were going on the Kaieteur trip, Scott would wait around the hotel with nothing to do! They were supposed to pick us up between 9 and 9:30, but it was after 10 before they showed up. Caribbean time! We drove to the local airport (Ogle), and had to get weighed in. The other tourists were already there, all of them were Guyanese living in Canada. The plane was 100lbs overweight, so we had to eat/drink our snacks right then (how that helped the weight? it's still inside us). The plane was a 10-seater, quite cramped. We took off and got a good view out over Georgetown which was completely surrounded by sugarcane fields. The fields soon gave way to rainforest and meandering rivers. The flight out to Kaieteur was about an hour; the pilot gave us a good view out over the falls as we approached. The flight was fine, not bumpy at all but we did pass around some rain cells. Landing at the tiny airstrip wasn't too bad either. We walked awhile through the rainforest, looking for cock-of-the-rock birds. This part of Guyana used to
be connected to Africa millions of years ago. There were huge bromeliads, 14 feet tall or more! The walk through the forest was nice, with birds of paradise flowers growing wild. No luck with the birds, but we did see some golden frogs hiding in the bromeliads. They have poison in their skin over 160,000 times more potent than cocaine! No toad licking here. We came out to an awesome viewing point of the falls. This is rainy season in Guyana, so the falls were at their fullest. 425 feet wide and 36,000 gallons a second were pouring over the falls, a straight drop of 741 feet. Feeling quite insignificant, we kept walking closer to the falls, stopping at 3 or 4 different vantage points along the way. We did the easy trip, flying in, but some opt for the 4-day boat/hike in. Eventually we ended up right at the lip of the falls, posing at an outcrop which had water pouring around it! There was a storm system moving in so we headed back to the plane. Our next stop was Baganara, another one of the tourist resorts. I sat in the copilots seat this time, but the weather
Kaieteur falls
Our first view from the air was much grayer than our trip out. We stopped at Baganara for a few hours for lunch. It was quite a nice resort, built on an island in the massive Essequibo river. There were 10 rooms, and a nice porch/bar area where we ate lunch. Wasn't great weather for swimming, and we soon headed back to Georgetown. On the way back, we had a great view out over the city and Stabroek market. We went for dinner again to the Dutch Bottle cafe. Really good Caribbean chicken, and their fried rice was really delicious with mushrooms, broccoli, etc. We had an early night tonight as the next day we would be heading to Suriname!
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