travelgirl 2011 |
|
|
"Man, that’s one |
I traveled to Guyana – a lime-wedge-shaped South American country squeezed between Suriname, Brazil, Venezuela and the Atlantic – expressly to see these creatures. In my mind, they resembled the sea otters of my Pacific Northwest home: all jolly grapefruit cheeks and puffy two-ply fur. But here on the coffee-colored Rupununi River, all I can think is, "man, that’s one massive water weasel. I hope she doesn’t like white meat, because after an especially overcast Seattle winter, that’s all I am.” Beside heavyweight otters, Guyana also has manatees, jaguars, giant anteaters, pink dolphins, the world’s largest alligator (black caiman) and its most heavyweight rodent (the hairy, 140lb capybara). Eight types of primates live there, including Gumby-limbed spider monkeys. Smithsonian experts continue to count bird species, whose number has already flown past 800, including man-sized Jabiru storks. Among its tropical plants, the national flower – the Victoria amazonica water lily – blooms up to 10 feet in diameter and has pads big and burly enough to support an infant. That’s all eye-strainingly awesome. But zoom to panorama for the bigger picture: the fact that 80% of Guyana remains wild – the globe’s largest swathe of intact Amazonian rainforest. And the 45-year-old country plans to keep it that way. *** Carbon offsetting, it emerges, goes far beyond donating trees to assuage the guilt of air travel. Guyana has volunteered to do planetary penance – for a price. Norway, counterbalancing its North Sea oilrigs, has offered to pay the South The infant nation plans to plow this money into environmentally sound improvements. Already, high-speed internet starts to snake through the rainforest, where villagers club together and handcraft eco-lodges like Maipaima, near Nappi. If you build it – and a website – they will come. Right? We do, at least: a ragtag bunch touring with Wilderness Explorers. The group hikes 17 miles roundtrip to Jordan Falls: we’re among the first 100 gringos to glimpse this massive cascade. Where the whitewater splits like a mermaid tail, we lie on the crag and drink rum under pinwheeling stars. Then we shine lights under the hammocks, checking for bushmaster snakes, before bunking down. Back on the trail the next day, we try to power along like the Makushi tribespeople. The “Children of the Forest” lower their heads and just motor. No rests. No snacks. No shoes, even – most wear flip-flops. But minimal isn’t always better (a lesson the W Hotels might also want to heed). The Cook Julietta tumbles 20 feet down a muddy hillside. She’s unable to catch herself with both arms full: she clutches a metal tub of fish in one hand, a plastic bucket with a Saran-wrapped cake in the other. When she winces to a stop, a snapped sapling pushes against her ribs, bruising, but luckily not puncturing, her skin. Her face a tight fist of pain, she waves away aspirin and limps into camp unassisted. “We’re Makushi,” the guide Carlandine Bernita Wenceslaus explains. “We just keep going.” Later I’m told the country has only a single search and rescue helicopter, not that we had a satellite phone to call it or anything. Guyana brings a whole new meaning to “walk it out”… ***
"Growing up here,” notes Diane McTurk, the fifth-generation owner, "it was like running naked in paradise.” But with adulthood comes responsibility: fixing the generator, MacGyvering jeep repairs, fending hungry goats away from the paperbacks (mmmm, binding glue). Nothing works quite right, and no amount of baling wire and duct tape can patch all the country’s problems. Guyana is poor, despite a landscape rich in gold and diamonds. If tourism ramps up, it can market wilderness and indigenous experiences, instead of selling off natural resources to miners, loggers and ranchers. Children could study by clean, safe, solar-powered light, rather than hunched near candles and kerosene lamps. And maybe it’ll even “walk out” the specter of Jonestown, where American cult leader Jim Jones sparked murders and cyanide suicides that killed 918 people in 1978. It’s hard to fight the cultural cache of the “drink the Kool-Aid” catchphrase ... But if anywhere can pull that off, it’ll be English-speaking Guyana, which threads together unfettered nature and vivid cultures – African, Chinese, European, Caribbean, AmerIndian, East Indian and Latin American – as deftly as a rope hammock. Two decades years ago, this country faced the developing world’s worst economic decline, after trying to establish a cooperative (read “socialist”) republic. Flat broke, it simply stopped paying foreign debt. But here Guyana is today, spinning Norwegian kroner into light and motion, protecting its culture alongside the rainforests’ medicinal plants and leafy, oxygen-exhaling biomass. *** Belle the bad-mood otter finally veers away, close enough that I can count the water drops spangling her whiskers. The dinghy engine coughs into action and we slide away from Karanambu and its sun-seared, Out-of-Africa ambience. I comfort myself: “at least you saw Giant River Otters, even if they were too cranky to swim with guests like usual.” But Guyana isn’t done. Two days later, we’re on Grass Pond near Rewa, when Wally Prince – the legendary birding guide – spots a sleek brown head, maybe a flash of bloodshot eyes. Prince paddles the dugout canoe up and down the lake, despite the fierce chop. “There,” he shouts. “No, wait, there! It’s hard for your eyes to see, because you haven’t grown up in this environment.” The Giant River Otter – a curious young male – takes long, arcing dives. But eventually the sun glints just right off a wave’s trough and I glimpse him. Just like Guyana’s potential, he’s beautiful. Six Unmissable Activities in the Land of Six Peoples Belly up to the edge Catch a caiman Kayak the rainforest Shop for crab oil Spy on hummingbirds Watch the Cock-of-the-Rock *** Guyana 411 Guyana Tourism Authority – www.guyana-tourism.com |
|
"Guyana has volunteered |
||
"If tourism ramp
|
||
"Catch a charter |
||
return to the portfolio |