We're heading out for a nice last meal in Georgetown then up early early (or maybe late? can you call 2:30am early?) to head home. I'll try to update with some more pictures and stories sometimes in the next few days because the story about wanting to puke is no way to end my blog.
Our first stop was about an hour and a half away at the Canopy Walkway which is near the south entrance to Iwokrama but is run by CATS (the same organization that runs the eco-lodge we stayed in in Annai a few weeks ago). The Canopy walkway is about 200 meters of swinging bridge through the canopy of the rainforest with 4 platforms to stop and enjoy the sights.
Here I am on one of the walkways. I know it's pretty safe and everything but that doesn't stop me from being a little nervous that's for sure! We spent most of our time while at the Canopy walkway on the highest of the platforms (about 100m above the ground... or was it feet? I know... big difference, but I can't remember... it was high that's all I know) hanging out on lawn chairs watching for wildlife. It was pretty cool but no great pictures because most of our time was spent doing this:
Which doesn't lead to great pictures because everything we saw was too far away. But we did get to watch a family of red howler monkeys hanging out and scratching and apparently sleeping in later than we do. We also saw quite a few creepy crawlies in and around the platform.
Like this. Can you tell what it is? It's a tarantula, but for some reason it doesn't have 8 legs. Who knows why, our guide didn't know either. But he was hanging out about 6 inches behind my chair on the tree... creepy!
Like this. Anyone going anywhere north of here in Guyana (usually Georgetown) has to wait here to catch a ferry across to the other side. We on the other hand got our own boat (seen here) to take us to the Field Station which is about a 5 minute boat ride west of the road on the same side of the river. Also in this picture you can see Cassius standing between Stacey and the boat. He was our own personal guide who was pretty much there to do whatever we wanted with us for the entire length of our stay. I'm used to backpacking where I barely ever even spring for the guided tours with one guide to 10 or 15 people let alone my own personal guide! Fancy!
It was a little strange being there because we were the only guests. This was our table, always nicely set with our own waitress to serve us every meal. A little bit away (close enough to see, but far enough that they were separate) was where the many staff ate meals that didn't look nearly as yummy as ours and had to serve themselves. It was a little bit isolating.. but nice to be pampered for a day.
This is the best picture I could get of them, but I promise they were cool. In fact, they pretty much looked exactly like this:
But unfortunately I had to get this picture from the internet.
Because the water is so high right now, there are parts of the forest that are literally under water! So for about, oh I don't know, maybe 200 meters we were literally boating through the middle of the forest! Not only was that super cool, but it also shortened the hike :-)
Turtle Mountain is 940 vertical feet high. For some frame of reference, I think Wentworth is about 800 vertical feet. So probably not the highest I've ever hiked, but a decent hike for sure... especially after having gotten so little exercise the last few weeks. But boy was it worth it. When we got to the top we had the most spectacular view.
Sort of like this. The river you can see there is the Essequibo so we're looking North here. We spent about a half an hour just hanging out at the lookoff. Listening to the howler monkeys in the distance, watching the macaws fly over the canopy and just breathing it all in. It was unbelievable.
Finally, one for my dad. Called the rose of the mountain I think it was a big tall plant with these flowers every few inches all the way up. Kind of cool.
North Rupununi includes 16 villages, 6 of which you can see here. This is definitely the most densely populated area. The other villages all lie either somewhere on the road (in orange.. the only road around goes all the way from Brazil to Georgetown) or somewhere along the river (in blue... of course). I have in fact been to Kwatamang, Rupertee and near Annai, although not right in it. Most of the people here at Bina Hill live here. There are a couple however that either live in the nearby communities and walk to work (like the cleaner who is from Kwatamang) or from further away and drive in. Some, like the Medex drive in every day on his motorcycle. Others live further away and don't own vehicles so stay here most nights during the week and only head home on the weekends. The boys I refer to regularly consist of a couple that work here (either in the gardens or on the grounds or whatever), but mostly are a group of maybe 10 students here (boys and girls) preparing for their performance in Carifesta in Georgetown at the end of August.
So lets start from the front
On the left you can see 3 buildings. From closest to furthest they are the little store, the kitchen and the bathroom. On the right, you see the main building. The top floor of the main building has a couple rooms where people live, a community radio station and a big open area where they have meetings and workshops and stuff. The bottom floor has a couple of rooms that they put short-term guests in and the offices. Here is the main office where I spend most of my time.
The chair behind Stacey in the middle of the room is where I'm sitting right now (my laptop is behind the one you see facing you). The office has about 6 of its own computers (all laptops except the main one that has the printer and stuff) and can probably fit 6 or 7 people working simultaneously comfortably. I'm sure there has been more though.
This is the school. It's pretty dead right now except the Carifesta rehersals several times a day because they pretty much have the same school year as us. During the year it is an institute that apparently provides training in different trades. Kids come here either after or instead of going to secondary school. I don't completely understand how it works, but I talked to one girl who took Information Technology last year and wants to take Natural Resources next year. She is 15 years old and went straight from primary school to this place. I also heard that the Institute is working on getting itself recognized as a college or something like that.
These are the huts to the left of the road. I was relatively unfamiliar with this part of Bina Hill until recently, but the guy from the Peace Corps who arrived last week moved into the very last hut you can see here. He has a water filter, and we were going to be running out of bottled water in the store very very soon so I've started getting filtered water from him every morning. Very nice of him indeed :-)
The roofed area on the left is just a table with benches where you can eat, play checkers or just generally hang out. On the right you can see first a very little bit of the office, then the house that people I don't know very well live in (they specialize in Makushi culture and language though). Then there is another roofed little area that isn't really used at all except by the donkeys. Then finally you see the zinc roof that is our building. The front half of it is just open and has a hammock. The back half is our room, which I showed you yesterday.
This is where we do laundry. And on the right you can see some outdoor showers. I haven't used these ones though because I feel the walls were made for makushi people who tend to be quite a bit shorter than me and I don't particularly feel like flashing everyone here. Behind the laundry you can see some more huts where other people live. And if you keep walking about 200 meters further you get to the fish pond that I showed you the other day also.
This is my bedroom. On the walls you can't see are a couple of sets of shelves with all of our stuff, but this is basically it: 2 beds and a make-shift clothesline for our towels.
I don't know these kids names, but I've gotten to know them a little. The baby is the cleaner's son, so whenever she's working she brings one of the girls from her town with her to take care of him while she works. The older girls seems really good with him, and I'm very thankful because last week it was his 7 year old sister that was taking care of him and he is crying much less often this week. Plus it's hard for me to watch a 7 year old take care of a baby and not want to take care of both of them.
A donkey. They just roam around randomly. Sometimes they run, but usually only when the boys around here or the dogs start chasing them. We also get random roaming cows and horses.
This is the fish pond. On Sunday one of the boys (Bian) offered to take us to the fish pond. Not only was I not expecting only about a 100m walk, I also was not expecting a man-made fish pond. Apparently it was just dug a few months ago and they are going to be putting fish in. Nick (from the Peace Corps) was trying to tell him that it needs plants so that there can be oxygen in the water, but he seemed to think they could just throw fish in and they would be great. Or maybe I just wasn't understanding his english well, that's always a possibility around here.
And last, but not least, the puppies. I went out to try to get some pictures of them today, but don't know where they are at the moment. This is a picture of them nursing the first day the boys found them when they were (according to them) about a week old. Eyes closed, couldn't walk, it was quite the sight! Sorry I don't have a better picture of them, but believe me when I say they are cute :-)
Here we are carrying our boards. This is the easiest way to carry the longboards, but it was doable by yourself if you needed to.
You can see us walking down the beach a little bit here. The beach we surfed at was about a 15 minute walk from the camp because there was too much reef (aka rocks) at the camp. The picture is taken from camp and the beach is quite a bit beyond the first point you see there but before the point you can see in the distance.
And here I am surfing! I like this one because I knew my picture was being taken and therefore was smiling, but it's not much of a wave so here's another one.
This actually looks like a decent sized wave I guess. Believe me when I say the waves seemed a lot bigger when we were actually doing it! Although I suppose when we were first catching them they were because they would have gotten smaller by the time I got standing up.
And here I am heading in. I would usually spend 1-2 hours in the water and I went twice a day (some people would forgo twice a day and just go once some days, but I am way too stubborn and was determined to get good at it :-P) This is also how the board was carried alone. My arms weren't quite long enough though, so when they got tired, sometimes I would carry it like this:
Pretty convenient, but after a while my head would start to hurt so I had to switch it up pretty regularly. Every once in a while my instructor, Brett, would be heading back at the same time as me and we'd trade boards. It was WAY easier to carry the short boards, that's for sure!
This is maybe the bottom third of the waterfall that I went to see. You can see how big it is because there are little specks to the right of it which are actually people. You could swim in the lake, but not get very close to the actual waterfall because it was WAY too strong.
A toucan! I saw and heard toucans all the time while I was in Costa Rica, but this was the closest I ever got to one. Actually at a look-off for the waterfall.
This is Volcan Arenal, the main reason most people come to La Fortuna. This is the best view of it I got, which was during my drive out to the rapelling tour I did (of which you already saw the pictures). I did go on a tour that took me to the volcano where I could see Lava, but it was pretty much just a little line of red in the distance and didn't look like anything in a picture. Pretty cool, but I can't show it here. I may have mentioned this already, but apparently there is a volcano in Guatamala that lets you get right up to the lava. So close that they roast marshmallows on it! Now THAT would be cool :-)
The other stop on my volcano tour was at the free hotsprings. Here is a picture of me taken by my tour guide. Like I described before, it was pretty much a hot river. Kinda cool. Also notice how white I am. I am by no means that white anymore :-) Although, I can't say I'm spending too much time in the sun here in Guyana so I might be this white again before I get home.
My final activity in La Fortuna was the hike up Cerro Chato the morning before I left. This is a good representation of the hike. Closest to the bottom of this picture is often what it was like with random roots at irregular intervals that sort of-sometimes acted like steps. Then there were areas more like the top of the picture which were actual man-made steps which were not very well maintained so while that was nice in some areas, it didn't really help much in others.
What I got at the top of the hike: a lake in the crater of the volcano :-) Quite beautiful for the 10 minutes I had before the clouds completely surrounded me, and also I nice refreshing swim before heading back down.
I had a lot of fun making this one. It is a combination of 6 or 7 pictures I took on the way down Cerro Chato of what the view was like. I believe if you click on it you can get a bigger view. If not I apologize, you're going to have to take my word for it that it was beautiful :-)
Some of the way there and most of the way back we were carrying our shoes and walking through shallow water because it's the rainy season. I actually rather enjoyed this. Especially because usually if we weren't in the water we were in grassy areas where we got absolutely attacked by mosquitos. We've since learned that these types of mosquitos apparently don't leave itchy bites, but it was still not so fun to be swatting whole swarms of them away. The way back we took a different route which was way more water but almost no mosquitos. Quite pleasant in fact.
Most of the meeting was in english, but some of it was in the local indigenous language of mukushu. It was the first time I'd ever heard it and didn't understand anything (except imported words like mosquitos and bednets and stuff). After the meeting, we asked them if it was okay if we took pictures and all the kids were immediately interested in our cameras. I actually let a couple of them take mine and take some pictures. They didn't really know how to work it though so I got quite a few pictures of the floor. Here is one that I helped them take of me.
The building you see closest is actually mine and Stacey's room. The two windows on the left are by our beds. The other windows are part of the open part that doesn't really have rooms or walls or anything. The blue and white building that you can see in the back is the main building where the office is and where we spend most of the day. I have better pictures of the area though and will add those some other day. Still 4 weeks left... tons of time for pictures!
These are two of the 3/4 dogs at the Hotel Interamericano where I stayed in Turriabla (3 were actually pets there and there was one stray that was a friend who hung out all the time). The Golden retreiver was Allison's favorite because he was very calm and affectionate, but I like the black one because he was nuts... in a good way of course! He LOVED to play fetch so much that if his ball wasn't actually around, he would find anything he could and bring it to you to throw for him. This varied from a leaf, to a little twig to sometimes something that was too small for me to figure out what he wanted to throw. It didn't matter to him that it only went about 2 feet when you threw it.
This is Pelusa who belonged to Pete of Gringo Pete's in La Fortuna. She was the sweetest dog I've ever met and just sort of hung out all day at the hostel. I pretty much couldn't walk by without either playing a little fetch or giving a little love. She was awesome!
And this is the horse that lived at the surf camp. He just sort of grazed all day like this, but sometimes he got a little rowdy. Definitely the most personality I've ever experienced in a horse! Side story: Our first night at surf camp when we had arrived at about 11pm and went straight to bed, I thought I heard the horse. When I said something along those lines to Stacey, her response was "It was probably just someone snoring" Little did we know, there actually WAS a horse!
And finally, here at Bina Hill. There are a bunch of dogs and one cat that just sort of hang out. I don't think they belong to anyone or are even fed by anyone (although they did let me give them my bones from the chicken we had at lunch yesterday). The american PhD that is based out of here has somewhat adopted her and her sister and mother. Her name is Iris, she is about 8 weeks old and she is just adorable. But I try to make sure to wash my hands after playing with her because she recently had worms lay eggs in her skin... who knows what other diseases she could be carrying.
