I think Dillon has a few different tour packages and since I was going to be here for a few days I just booked them all.
I made myself a classy "stay the eff out of my room" sign at the hotel then headed out.
It was nice to see that Coca-Cola wasn't letting Pepsi dominate the inappropriately branded town welcome sign game.
We were going on a longer trip this down the river this time so the first order of business was to load up on gas.
Dillon's batmobile's grill had pipes welded to it that doubled as good fishing pole holders.
At the gas station there was a fun little outdoor bakery place.
The round cake is a Chiney cake. "We don't say Chinese we say Chiney."
I think it had red bean paste inside which is a classic.
This place's Pepsi sign proudly declared that this was "#2 Village".
His old school Guyanese driver's license had his photo stapled to it.
While driving we saw a man on a bicycle with a bird cage hanging from the handlebar. These were "race song birds". In what sounds like the yawniest cock fight imaginable the birds don't move or contact each other, they sit and see who can get the most tweets in a time period to win. I'm imagining the level of excitement of a live viewing of a children's spelling bee.
On today's journey we had a special guest: Shakira the dog.
Dillon rubbing in the fact that he has a sweet cutlass and I do not.
We spotted a ton of monkeys on this trip, sakiwinki(squirrel), capuchin, and howlers.
It's hard to capture with photographs but the water here was super black. The water moved slow enough and there were enough tanniny plants around that the river turned into one big cup of tea.
We had a random conversation with some guys who were on the lookout for their stolen boat.
This was a new one. This guy was standing in waist high water net fishing.
Once or twice Dillon said he saw a manatee and stopped the boat but I never caught a glimpse. It was still kind of cool to know that they were out here regardless.
I picked up some terrible sunscreen in who knows what country, and it washed off with the slightest bit of rain.
A big feature of our trip today was a visit to Fort Nassau. Guyana was a Dutch colony before it was a British one, and the fort was built to support the colonial effort in 1627, serving as its capital The fort was burned down by the Dutch in 1763 to prevent it from being captured by slaves during the Berbice Slave Uprising.
The ants here were super cool. I'm not sure what type they were but they were special to me because they had different body types depending on their job. The ones with the giant white heads are the soldiers, for example. I also have a pretty big white head but luckily this wasn't used to determine my profession.
There's not a lot left remaining of the fort, but one of the most well preserved elements are these grave stones. It's funny I think the writing was well preserved but it was in cursive and so damn near impossible for me to read.
There were a lot of glass booze bottles around.
1722 was a good year.
Shakira was a fan of the graves.
Steps were all that remained of former buildings.
Later we went fishing and ended up snagging some piranhas.
I tried my hand at snagging some caimans once it got dark. I don't think I did half bad.
The waves on the trip back were brutal. Our little boat kept ramping them, catching a little air, then slamming back down over and over. Hundreds of those impacts were rattling my bones and hurting my teeth. Earlier in the morning our large container of gasoline tipped over and threw the boat off balance, slamming my knee into the side of the boat. Adventurin' ain't easy.
