Guyana River Life

Georgetown gave us a very warm greeting. Nina, one of our fellow passengers on the flight from Kaieteur had been showing her visiting family around and very kindly offered us a ride to our guesthouse.
We happily accepted. There were heaps of taxis around, but nonetheless having a reliable, friendly ride was most welcome as G'Town has a pretty terrible reputation for street crime (right up there with Rio and Sao Paulo, which, given our experiences in those two cities suggests that it probably isn't really that bad after all...)
Anyhow, as a result of this reputation and our unfamiliarity with the city, all we dared to do was go across the street to a nightclubby looking place for dinner. I was kind of expecting it to be mediocre and expensive, but the fish curry was tasty and rich and the crab and calaloo (dark green leaf vegetable) soup was spicy and delicious, complete with very occasional tiny bits of crab shell.
Our connection with the nightclub continued as their music blared throughout the neighbourhood late into the night. There's something about the Guyanese and really loud music. Just about anywhere you go you're likely to find a big speaker stack blasting out the tunes. Fortunately I rather like the music they usually play, which includes lots of covers (and originals) of 60s through 80s soul music, 80s pop and the occasional Latin tune. And of course the ubiquitous reggae/dub. Being in Guyana has genuinely given me a new appreciation for non-Bob Marley reggae (though Bob shows up pretty regularly of course).

The next morning we were obliged to change accommodation as the Rima guesthouse had a big tour arriving. An American woman named Jennifer was in the same boat, so we agreed to share a room at the pricier (but air conditioned and fridge-having) Sleep Inn.
Jennifer had done a research project in Guyana during university and was back to  visit some of the friends she'd made down in the Rupununi. She was set to leave at the ridiculous hour of 04:40 for her flight the next morning. We meanwhile were planning an only slightly more sensible wake-up in order to get to the town of Charity for market day.
Between this and the fact that, being Sunday, the city was all but empty (and as a result not safe to walk around, depending on who you ask), we still managed to have a bit of a fun afternoon and evening.
We started by going out and looking for lunch and an ATM (most everyone in Guyana had so far been okay with accepting payments in USD, but it was simpler and slightly better value to use GYD). We found lunch from one of the common street restaurants, which consist of little more than a folding table with some pots and trays of food plus a big stack of takeaway containers. Chicken curry and roti for lunch! We found the ATM just down from our lunch spot by following along the busier streets (as it turned out this was the one the lady at our guesthouse said we oughtn't to go to as the neighbourhood would be "very lonely," but there seemed o be enough foot traffic around).

After a bit of a cooling rest in the aircon we walked up to the sea wall. Georgetown is actually a metre or two below sea level. So the undramatic structure is actually very important to the well being of the city. All of this is hardly a surprise, as the town was originally settled by the Dutch!
The seawall is supposedly a popular spot on a Sunday afternoon, but obviously we were a bit early, as there weren't a ton of people around and the portable bars, games of chance, bouncy castles and trampolines were still getting set up for the day.
We headed back towards home before it really got going as we were keen to find a fun spot to watch the finals of the Caribbean Premier League cricket that was being contested by the Guyana and Trinbago that evening.

We'd scoped out a spot on our way out and sure enough it was full of cricket fans when we got there. We had to squeeze in on a few plastic chairs that spilled out beyond the confines of the bar and into the street. There was a big table of Trinidadian fans at the next table over, but there was also an entertaining match (for a while at least) and lots of Banks (the local lager) and Guinness to go around, so everyone had a jolly time.
Unfortunately by the time there were about 10 overs left, it had started to rain in Trinidad (and it was already pretty clear that Guyana weren't going to win) so when we learned that the delay was going to be at least two hours after the rain stopped we decided to pack it in.

Before setting our alarm for a foolishly early time, Sarah and I had come up with an alternate plan for the next few days that didn't involve waking up at stupid o'clock, so we said goodbye to Jennifer and got to have a good night's rest.

The next morning we headed down to the central Starbroek Market to catch a bus across the 2km floating Demerara River Bridge and along the coastal road to the west.  About an hour's drive brought us to Parika on the Essequibo River. No bridges here; the Essequibo is about 15km across near its mouth.
In any case we weren't headed across, but up the river. A speedboat with about 25 seats and two 200HP engines would carry us about 50km to the town of Bartica.  On the way down we steamed through a big thunderstorm that forced us to batten down the hatches. Or more accurately, roll down the sturdy plastic rain covers. These worked well to keep us dry, but made it very hot and steamy in the boat, so it was a relief to all the passengers when it calmed and we could once again watch the forest zip past.

Bartica calls itself "the gateway to the interior," and is the first (or last) stop for many gold and diamond miners as they head south. We expected it to be a lot like Mahdia, which was fine, as we'd quite liked its energy and "wild west" feel.  Bartica had a bit of this, but it was more of a lived-in town. Bigger, but less intense than Mahdia had been.

And there wasn't really all that much to do in Bartica. We could have taken a (doubtless fun and interesting) tour upriver, but that would have involved chartering a whole boat, which was beyond our budget.
So instead we walked around the town and sat at the beachside park where the annual Bartica regatta was focussed.  Apparently the regatta started in 1947 when a foreign sailor who'd been boasting about the speed of his onboard motorboat was challenged by a local captain, and has since grown into the highlight of the Bartica calendar.

Also on the waterfront was a black granite memorial to the twelve people killed when a gang of escaped convicts attacked and pillaged the town for one terrible hour on the night of February 17, 2008. They departed by boat and within six months had all been killed or captured by the Guyanese police and military. It was shocking that something like this could have happened so recently in an otherwise happy little town.

We also spent more than a little time sitting on the balcony at the D Factor Guesthouse, as two out of our three afternoons in town featured really spectacular thunderstorms, including lightning strikes where the light and sound happen simultaneously and the thunder isn't a rumble or even a clap, but an earsplitting crack that makes you jump out of your seat.

The final highlight of Bartica was a culinary one. We'd seen a food cart on our first night advertising "International Plantain and Cheese, Out Da Pan and In Yo Hand."  How could we not give it a try when we found them open on night two? It was great! Vaguely like a Guyanese poutine. Deep fried plantain sticks topped with a two-egg omelette and grated cheese. And a healthy dose of pepper sauce of course! We got a large to share that night, then went back and got a large and a small between us the next evening.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to talk a bit about Guyanese food more generally. It takes influences from Indian, African, European and even a bit of Chinese. With this in mind you'd expect it to be deliciously diverse. You'd be half right. We really enjoyed almost all of the food we ate in Guyana, but it did become a bit same-y after a while.
Breakfast was almost always Chana (spiced cooked chick peas... during our stay Sarah and I ran a personal contest to determine the best chana in Guyana) with some roti or Pholurie (kind of like cassava flour doughnuts).  There were also pre-made burgers of various sorts available, but we tended to avoid these. Dinner was a bit more diverse. It was usually fried chicken/fish and chips, curry and rice or "cook up" which is effectively spiced boiled rice with some legumes and whatever else is lying around.   And lunch was usually a choice of the breakfast or dinner foods and/or various fried snacks (e.g. Scotch egg, corndog type things or battered deep fried eggplant [very yummy!])
The Chinese food we found was pretty uninspiring, fried rice or chow mein and that was about it (doubly disappointing since a lot of Guyana's Chinese immigrants originally came from Sichuan province).
The fruit was good, but not quite AS good or varied as I'd hoped.  Though the juices we tried (despite almost invariably being sweetened) were very tasty and refreshing.
One uniquely Guyanese dish that I tried and really liked was Pepper Pot, a savoury, spicy-sweet slow cooked meat dish. Oh, and I ate a tapir empanada at an Amerindian heritage event. It was sort of like dry, slightly sweet venison.  (I just realized today that all tapir species are classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN list, so boo to me for working against their conservation by eating one :-( )
So overall we quite liked the food in Guyana (the ubiquity of fish was helpful for pescatarian Sarah). I'd rate it in the top three South American countries to eat in, especially if your visit is relatively short.
Anyhow we spent three nights in Bartica largely because doing so would allow us to take the slower (but much cheaper and presumably more relaxing and scenic) government steamer back to Parika instead of a private speedboat.
We got to the dock early and were told to wait to buy our tickets and board, which we did happily enough.
We continued to wait happily when our 12:00 departure time came and went.  And we were still waiting at 13:00. A bit less happily so at 14:00. And still less happily when around 15:30 we were told that due to engine troubles the boat wouldn't be going until 06:00 the next morning at the earliest.
We'd already made plans to arrange our documentation for Suriname on the following day (Friday). The embassy was only open on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. We had plans out of Georgetown for Monday, so if we weren't back in town by that evening we'd be delaying getting our visas by five days.

So. Another pricey speedboat back to Parika (though I'll say again that the trip on the speedboat actually was a lot of fun. And pretty well managed too, with set fares as well as passenger lists and pre-departure inspections to ensure that the boats weren't overloaded and that everyone was wearing their lifejackets).

We took a slightly different route back to Town (as the locals call Georgetown). Instead of driving back across the bridge we were dropped at the Vreed en Hoop Stelling (Stelling being the Guyanese name for a passenger boat pier) and took a speedboat back across the Demerara right to Stabroek market, where we'd started out journey a few days previously.

The light was fading as we headed back to the rima guesthouse, but we still had time to pick up a few bags of quick eats from vendors around the market to supplement the papaya we'd been gifted by the folks at our Bartica guesthouse.

The next few days would be when we got to do most of our getting to know Georgetown, so I think I'll stop here and save them for the next (and final Guyana) entry.