Guyana Trip Wrap Up

While Dillon was no longer being paid to babysit me, we were pretty much best friends now so he invited me to watch his presentation at a Guyanese tourism event. Lucky for me it was being held in a unique building just across the street from the Marriott, which must be the most expensive hotel in Guyana. I don't like to brag but 

"Umana Yana

The word 'Umana Yana' is an indigenous term used by the Wai Wai Amerindians to describe the huge benabs they use as meeting places. The first Umana Yana was built in 1972 and was designed by Guyanese architect Mr. George Henry. It took 80 days and 60 Wai Wai Amerindians from Konashen, Rupununi, under the leadership of Chief Elka to be completed. On August 9, 1972, the flags of over 80 nations lined the eastern boundary as the building became operational.

Unfortunately this benab collapsed in 1993 under high winds, but was later reconstructed circa 1995. Disaster struck again, this time it was razed by fire on September 9, 2014.

Reconstruction of the third and present Umana Yana started in later 2015 and was completed in 2016. A group of 35 Wai Wai men from Deep South Rupununi along with Toshao Paul Chekema, were contracted to complete the roof of the Umana Yana. The men used a combination of modern and traditional Indigenous techniques, materials and tools."

The program was a bunch of different tour operators from around the country giving little presentations on their tours. Parts of this were a bit annoying because they were reminding me of all the beauties of Guyana that I would never see now that my journey was almost at an end.

Blackwater Adventures is Dillon's company.

Watching Dillon's clip show was like some sort of magical montage of my own trip. He has a few different tours but I pretty much did them all.

There were a couple of food tour operators that provided local bites once the presenting was over. I think the white lumps were metemgee make out of sweet potato and coconut milk. The banana leaf thing was conkie which was kind of like a tamale made from plantains maybe? The rice and beans mess was called "cookup rice" and was made with coconut milk as well. That seemed to be a common ingredient in a lot of things.

Mutts in Guyana are called "cookup dogs" since they are also a random mix of stuff. Shakira is cookup 4 lyfe. She was a street dog that they adopted, and had a lot of funny street dog unique personality quirks. For example I think she maybe hated other dogs? Like they had another dog but Shakira didn't play nice with it when left alone.

She was down to eat people food on the regular.

I watched a bit of cricket in the hotel lobby while waiting for my car to the airport.

I've never paid for this plastic wrap machine thing at the airport but today it was a necessity because I had a giant sword sticking out of the side of my luggage. I prayed that I would still be rocking my dangerous cutlass in the land of freedom.

I love obscure countries' airport lounges. You never know what you're going to witness inside. This one had classy wooden doors.

The doors were probably the best part but they did have tiny bottles of Banks beer. One for the road!

Covid has added another layer of annoyance and bureaucracy onto what was already sometimes unpleasant international travel experience.

Byeeee

Guyanese Fort Ruins and Piranhas

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.