Luckily we had internet access at Iwokrama Rainforest Lodge so we could chat with Kerri and Tyler and catch up with the goings on in Papamoa. We were also able to let our reserved accommodation in Georgetown know what was happening. Iwokrama is organised from an office in Georgetown - problems happen when decisions are made a long way from where the action is.
We had an early night's sleep but were woken even earlier when the fan stopped in the early hours as the solar batteries ran out of stored power. We got our gear organised with head lights and had an early breakfast of sardines, okra and eggplant and rice.
We met the van at the police check point and checked in before crossing on the ferry.
The minivan had a two seats for us and a few Brazilians and and 4 children. The driver was an elderly man who drove carefully. We stopped at a cafe for what we thought was a breakfast stop at 9am but later found out it was in fact the lunch break we were told to expect. We didn't eat, but the other passengers bought chicken and rice dishes in take away styrofoam containers. I watched the BBC news on their huge screen while the driver tightened up a few loose bits under the van.
A few men got off at a logging camp where a group of young girls rushed the van selling sweets. It rained on and off and the road was potholed a lot worse than the first section from Brazil.
The other passengers managed to sleep all crunched up on the terrible road and one lady consoled herself by reading her enormous bible study book.
Several old beaten up logging trucks passed us on the road adding to the huge ruts and turning the road edges into slush. A few 4 wheel drive vehicles were also on the road and one stopped to shoot some of the animals in the trees.
There were signs about unauthorized mining in the rain forest and we saw several workers on their bicycles heading between camps. It took nine and a half hours to do the first 106 kms and one and a quarter to do the last 106 on the sealed section from Linden to Georgetown. Linden is a bauxite and aluminum producing town with several abandoned mines and lots of old factories.
We caught a taxi to our B & B with a lovely tropical garden and a friendly helpful hostess. Sayaeda, is known as the local animal rights activist in town. She had been to the market and spotted a sloth jammed into a small cage and up for sale. She told the seller off and took the sloth away and refused to pay for it. She left the sloth at the zoo and then organised a flower farmer friend to take it and release it back into the wild. She invited us along to see the sloth at the zoo before it headed off.
While waiting for her to be interviewed by the local newspaper we watched the manatee or dugong eating lawn clippings in its pool and children coming with handfuls of grass to feed them. Apparently they have been in the pond since 1885. We didn't see them come out of the water and just saw their mouths sucking in the grass covering the pond.
Georgetown is below sea level and has a concrete wall surrounding it to keep the water from the city but it also has stinky rubbish strewn drains everywhere. It is popular for joggers to charge along and walkers to stroll on top of the sea wall.
Back at Sayaed's Rain Forest B 7 B we met a couple of women from New York. One was born in Guyana and left when she was 10 and was back to see how things had changed. This year Guyana celebrated 50 years of independence and there were signs and posters everywhere advertising this fact. We were also joined by a group of anthropologists from Germany, and Brazil who were working on various projects. We ordered a pizza for dinner and stayed in as the city is not safe at night.
We had a busy time walking about the city to get money from the Canadian bank, Scotia Bank. They are the only bank to accept foreign credit cards and have a very small daily limit and charge far too much for the privilege. There are numerous wooden building in Georgetown and some of them are really huge. A lot are badly in need of a paint job
.
Our second task was to get a visa for Suriname and luckily the embassy was not far from the B & B. Once we got there we saw a sign telling us that they have a dress code. John had to return home to put on long pants. Several Cubans arrived by taxi to get their visas and had strappy tops on so they had to take turns sharing a tee shirt before the security lady would even let them in, one at a time. I processed my forms while John was away and then was told we needed passport photos. This information was not on their information sign outside so John had to take another walk back to the B & B. He had wanted to enter on his British passport as a visa is not needed for Suriname but when she asked for his entry stamp there wasn't one as he entered on his NZ one.So, another trip back to the B & B and she wouldn't let him use his UK one and he had to pay and use his NZ one. We had to return in the afternoon to pick the passports up so at least it only took a few hours to process everything.
We walked about town to a book shop looking for a guide book to the Caribbean Islands but were unlucky and had to buy and download ebooks instead. The internet was slow and there were several power cuts so it took a long time to get done. We had decided that we would like to look at a few Caribbean islands as we had time to use that had been allocated for Venezuela, but with the dire economic situation there we are not going. We have read that subsidised food is being taken to Colombia where it is being sold for a profit and the farmers who are producing the subsidised food are not getting enough money to cover costs so they have stopped growing rice and sugar. People cannot get enough food and some are buying goods online from the US. Life is desperate there.
When we started researching, we found we needed a visa for Trinidad and Tobago so found an address and headed off to get that sorted but found the honarary consulate was no longer in town. We decided that we would get the visa in Suriname as we tried all the leads we found online but they were often contradictory.
We enjoyed the anthropological museum and its displays of the Amerindian tribes lifestyles and rituals. They had school children outside learning how to make pottery using the coil method.
One evening we got a taxi to a shopping mall on the outskirts of the city where ate at a Syrian refugee's shwarma stall. The Peace Corp lady recommended it so we decided to give it a go. The mall was huge with a movie theatre and a food court. Nearby were the beautifully laid out buildings for CARICOM , a political and economic Caribbean group. There were quite a number of Muslim women eating in the centre too.
We were picked up at 5am by the minibus to go to Paramaribo in Suriname. We stopped at few addresses to pick up people but we only had about 5 people. The driver raced along at 45 kms over the speed limit through towns with dogs, donkeys and cows on the road. He took risks squeezing in vehicles when overtaking and John told him off. Fortunately, he slowed down but still flirted with the girl next to him and showed her stuff on his cell phone while driving. No only did the ride remind us of a similar experience in Madagascar but so too did the landscape. There were wooden houses on stilts surrounded by rice paddies. Some of the concrete houses were huge with patterned archways that looked like each neighbour was trying to beat the next with their intricate arch patterns.
We arrived at 9am at the ferry and immigration office thankful that we were in one piece!
We had an early night's sleep but were woken even earlier when the fan stopped in the early hours as the solar batteries ran out of stored power. We got our gear organised with head lights and had an early breakfast of sardines, okra and eggplant and rice.
We met the van at the police check point and checked in before crossing on the ferry.
The minivan had a two seats for us and a few Brazilians and and 4 children. The driver was an elderly man who drove carefully. We stopped at a cafe for what we thought was a breakfast stop at 9am but later found out it was in fact the lunch break we were told to expect. We didn't eat, but the other passengers bought chicken and rice dishes in take away styrofoam containers. I watched the BBC news on their huge screen while the driver tightened up a few loose bits under the van.
A few men got off at a logging camp where a group of young girls rushed the van selling sweets. It rained on and off and the road was potholed a lot worse than the first section from Brazil.
The other passengers managed to sleep all crunched up on the terrible road and one lady consoled herself by reading her enormous bible study book.
Several old beaten up logging trucks passed us on the road adding to the huge ruts and turning the road edges into slush. A few 4 wheel drive vehicles were also on the road and one stopped to shoot some of the animals in the trees.
There were signs about unauthorized mining in the rain forest and we saw several workers on their bicycles heading between camps. It took nine and a half hours to do the first 106 kms and one and a quarter to do the last 106 on the sealed section from Linden to Georgetown. Linden is a bauxite and aluminum producing town with several abandoned mines and lots of old factories.
We caught a taxi to our B & B with a lovely tropical garden and a friendly helpful hostess. Sayaeda, is known as the local animal rights activist in town. She had been to the market and spotted a sloth jammed into a small cage and up for sale. She told the seller off and took the sloth away and refused to pay for it. She left the sloth at the zoo and then organised a flower farmer friend to take it and release it back into the wild. She invited us along to see the sloth at the zoo before it headed off.
While waiting for her to be interviewed by the local newspaper we watched the manatee or dugong eating lawn clippings in its pool and children coming with handfuls of grass to feed them. Apparently they have been in the pond since 1885. We didn't see them come out of the water and just saw their mouths sucking in the grass covering the pond.
Georgetown is below sea level and has a concrete wall surrounding it to keep the water from the city but it also has stinky rubbish strewn drains everywhere. It is popular for joggers to charge along and walkers to stroll on top of the sea wall.
Back at Sayaed's Rain Forest B 7 B we met a couple of women from New York. One was born in Guyana and left when she was 10 and was back to see how things had changed. This year Guyana celebrated 50 years of independence and there were signs and posters everywhere advertising this fact. We were also joined by a group of anthropologists from Germany, and Brazil who were working on various projects. We ordered a pizza for dinner and stayed in as the city is not safe at night.
We had a busy time walking about the city to get money from the Canadian bank, Scotia Bank. They are the only bank to accept foreign credit cards and have a very small daily limit and charge far too much for the privilege. There are numerous wooden building in Georgetown and some of them are really huge. A lot are badly in need of a paint job
.
Our second task was to get a visa for Suriname and luckily the embassy was not far from the B & B. Once we got there we saw a sign telling us that they have a dress code. John had to return home to put on long pants. Several Cubans arrived by taxi to get their visas and had strappy tops on so they had to take turns sharing a tee shirt before the security lady would even let them in, one at a time. I processed my forms while John was away and then was told we needed passport photos. This information was not on their information sign outside so John had to take another walk back to the B & B. He had wanted to enter on his British passport as a visa is not needed for Suriname but when she asked for his entry stamp there wasn't one as he entered on his NZ one.So, another trip back to the B & B and she wouldn't let him use his UK one and he had to pay and use his NZ one. We had to return in the afternoon to pick the passports up so at least it only took a few hours to process everything.
We walked about town to a book shop looking for a guide book to the Caribbean Islands but were unlucky and had to buy and download ebooks instead. The internet was slow and there were several power cuts so it took a long time to get done. We had decided that we would like to look at a few Caribbean islands as we had time to use that had been allocated for Venezuela, but with the dire economic situation there we are not going. We have read that subsidised food is being taken to Colombia where it is being sold for a profit and the farmers who are producing the subsidised food are not getting enough money to cover costs so they have stopped growing rice and sugar. People cannot get enough food and some are buying goods online from the US. Life is desperate there.
When we started researching, we found we needed a visa for Trinidad and Tobago so found an address and headed off to get that sorted but found the honarary consulate was no longer in town. We decided that we would get the visa in Suriname as we tried all the leads we found online but they were often contradictory.
We enjoyed the anthropological museum and its displays of the Amerindian tribes lifestyles and rituals. They had school children outside learning how to make pottery using the coil method.
One evening we got a taxi to a shopping mall on the outskirts of the city where ate at a Syrian refugee's shwarma stall. The Peace Corp lady recommended it so we decided to give it a go. The mall was huge with a movie theatre and a food court. Nearby were the beautifully laid out buildings for CARICOM , a political and economic Caribbean group. There were quite a number of Muslim women eating in the centre too.
We were picked up at 5am by the minibus to go to Paramaribo in Suriname. We stopped at few addresses to pick up people but we only had about 5 people. The driver raced along at 45 kms over the speed limit through towns with dogs, donkeys and cows on the road. He took risks squeezing in vehicles when overtaking and John told him off. Fortunately, he slowed down but still flirted with the girl next to him and showed her stuff on his cell phone while driving. No only did the ride remind us of a similar experience in Madagascar but so too did the landscape. There were wooden houses on stilts surrounded by rice paddies. Some of the concrete houses were huge with patterned archways that looked like each neighbour was trying to beat the next with their intricate arch patterns.
We arrived at 9am at the ferry and immigration office thankful that we were in one piece!
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