Guyana – Erin Travels The World

The Journey from Guyana to Suriname

The next morning after our day trip to Kaieteur Falls, we got up bright and early to start the drive to the border with Suriname. We needed to get in line for the ferry, which we were planning to take out of Guyana. The operative word here is… planning.

Before I get into that, though, one other aside. This trip was the first time I’d ever heard of the Essequibo dispute. Apparently, Guyana and Venezuela have been in an ongoing debate about this since 1840! About 15% of Guyana’s population lives there, but it looks like it’s about two-thirds of the land that is currently considered Guyana. While the territory was originally mapped out in 1840, it became a point of contention when gold was discovered and Venezuela has been lobbying for it ever since. I love that Guyana has their own local billboards declaring it theirs – we saw these all over, but I finally got a nice clear picture while we sat around and waited for the ferry.

Have you ever seen a vulture sit like a chicken before? Because I certainly hadn’t

We got the car in line and went through passport control to formally exit Guyana before we had a few hours waiting in no man’s land. We were having a pretty good time playing games and chatting while we waited. It had been a pleasant morning, right up until the moment when our driver came over and told us that the ferry was cancelled. So we all filed back into the ferry terminal, listened to the official announcement, and then we had to go back through passport control to get our exit stamps officially cancelled.

We were so close! You can see Suriname, right across the river

Side note, I love that the cancellation process is just a large “cancelled” stamp that gets added over the existing stamp. A truly unique part of my passport.

We considered all our options. There were no other ferry options or bridges or even private transport across the river. We looked at flights, but the problem was the 4.5 hour drive back through Georgetown to the airport. And that’s not including traffic. So we tried to get back to see if that was feasible, and the traffic kept adding travel time until we finally gave up and spent another night in Georgetown. It’s a good thing when your hotel is located above a pawn shop, right? Asking for a friend.

With that, all there was left to do was figure out dinner and book a flight to Paramaribo for the next morning. It seemed like the ferry issue wasn’t just a one-off thing, but an ongoing maintenance issue that led to the ferry being suspended indefinitely. And we know what that means (cancelled).

Georgetown is not my favorite city. I wouldn’t have chosen three nights here, ideally. The locals warned us around safety a lot while we were there, including this last night in the city. There were seven or eight of us who had gone out for dinner and drinks, and we had about a six minute walk back to our hotel. The other people at the bar were shocked we were going to walk, even with a fairly large group and a short walk, which did not fill me with confidence as we headed back to the hotel.

Thankfully, we made it to the airport the next day and our flight to Paramaribo was uneventful! After all that, it only took an hour by plane to get to Suriname.

A Flight to Kaieteur Falls

Welcome to Guyana! This is my 88th country and only my second in South America, so I definitely need to step it up in this continent.

Fun fact, there are a lot of territories that have been known as Guyana / Guiana in northern South America over the years. The word originally comes from indigenous languages and means “land of many waters,” which certainly describes this region. There were at one time five different Guianas: (1) Spanish Guiana, now a territory within Venezuela; (2) British Guiana, now the independent country of Guyana; (3) Dutch Guiana, now the independent country of Suriname; (4) French Guiana, now an overseas region of France; and (5) Portuguese Guiana, now a territory within Brazil. I had originally thought the etymology was related to the four Guinea countries so it was interesting to find an unrelated place word that sounds so similar.

Our first night was fairly uneventful. The airport in Georgetown is quite far from the city, so most of the first night was simply a long car ride to get into Georgetown and then dinner.

Once we had a good night’s sleep in Georgetown, it was on to the main event, which was a chartered flight down to Kaieteur Falls! There are a ton of different ways to rank waterfalls. Wikipedia informs me that the notable statistic for Kaieteur is that it is the “highest flow single drop waterfall” in the world and the 123rd highest in the world. It is very far south within Guyana and requires either a flight or a multi-day trek through the jungle to get to.

The views as we left Georgetown were nice. Georgetown has fairly colorful buildings and it also sits at the mouth of the Demerara River. As we followed the river south, the landscape turned from urban to farmland to jungle.

The first view of the waterfall from the air! It was very impressive, both at a distance and up close. We landed right next to the visitor center and met up with a local guide who showed us around the national park.

There were three different viewpoints to go to and along the way our guide would point out native plants and animals. The walk itself was very easy but the guide was awesome. Our time in Kaieteur National Park was definitely a highlight across this whole trip for me.

This is not the best picture I’ve ever taken, but was a cool animal to spot in the wild! This is a golden rocket frog, endemic to Kaieteur National Park. It was hard to see in the plant – they’re absolutely tiny, I was amazed our guide was able to spot it.

While we were in Kaieteur National Park, we also did a little birdwatching! This was the most excited I’ve ever been to see a bird in person. I’ve definitely seen other cool birds, but in most cases I just recognize that they are cool and then find out more about them later. This is the rare instance where I knew of this bird beforehand. Meet the Guianan cock-of-the-rock. Yes, their name is crazy. I’ve always thought they were super interesting looking with their crests. We got to see several of them through the trees.

Here, you can see Kaieteur National Park visitor records. Most people come by plane, as you can see. I think if you were a very outdoorsy person, the multi-day Amazon trek to come by land could be a worthwhile experience, but I was quite happy with my choice to arrive by plane.

It was such a cool day. Guyana wasn’t my favorite country of this trip but this certainly was my favorite single experience that I had over the course of this week!