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.
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.
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.