Scott's Thoughts

Hi everyone,

This is a guest blog written about John and Scott’s recent trip to Guyana.

In April, John and I made our trip down to Guyana to save Tim. At least that’s what we thought we were doing. Let me set the record straight: Tim is doing fine. There aren’t nearly as many snakes as I imagined, the locals call him “White Jesus”, and his host mom poured rum and coke for us at 11am. So, instead of saving Tim, we decided to spend two weeks down there kicking around the “Land of many waters.” Seriously… They say that a lot.

Our trip got off to a rough start after being held forransom by Caribbean Airlines in the Miami Airport. The airline wouldn’t give us our ticket 55 minutes before the flight because we were “late”. This is the first lesson on international travel we learned: Airlines are crooks and will make you miss your flight so you have to pay a new airfare. Be early and this can be avoided. We spent the night in the “Miami INTERNATIONAL Airport!” Sorry, the airport has an overly enthusiastic woman welcome you to the airport every 15 seconds over the intercom. You would think they might turn that off between 1am and 6am, but they don’t. I can’t get her voice out of my head. The next day we paid our ransom and made it to Georgetown, Guyana by 930pm. This is the point where we learned our second lesson on international travel: If you are travelling internationally, know the address you are staying at. They will assume you are a drug smuggler if you’re vague about where you’re staying. Our customs agent actually walked outside the airport to bring Tim back inside to explain where we would stay. Problem solved. Thanks Tim.

The next morning we went to the Stabroek Market. This place was actually one of my favorite parts of the trip. It felt like the entire Guyanese economy ran through that market, which isn’t saying a lot because their economy is in the dumps. We saw one of the tallest wooden churches in the world when we visited St. George’s Cathedral. Just down the street we walked past the Supreme Court and the house where the president lives. John and I thought that was pretty cool, but Tim really downplayed the importance of their president. We went back to the hotel to get a $1,000 ($5USD) plate of meat with some hot sauce and a Coca Cola with 64 grams of sugar (that’s 20 grams more than in the US!). I really enjoyed the hot sauce down there. It made most of the terrible food bearable to eat. That’s the other thing. The food sucks. Tim will probably say that’s not true, but he’s pretty skinny now so he’s not to be trusted.

We travelled around a lot in our 12 days. My favorite places were outside of Georgetown. Tim lives in a nice rural area where everyone is nice to each other. Depending on the time of day, they all greet each otherwith good morning, good day, good afternoon, etc. I really liked how friendly they were to me when I was clearly a stranger in their home.

One of my favorite days was our hike to Mashabo. We walked around this giant, beautiful lake that had trees growing through the water in the middle of the lake. I’d never seen anything like it. When we got to the village on the other side, Tim’s friend was waiting for us with lunch ready. It was one of the best meals we had. Fresh bread, cabbage and these black chunks that I assumed were some sort of bean. The black chunks are “chicken substitute” so I’ve decided to just not think about what that means too much. After lunch we learned to play some cricket. It was a bucket list item for me, but I still have no idea what the point of that game is. We met a family that lives in Mashabo and they cut down some coconuts from their tree for us. Then they gave each of us a “pear”. Don’t be tricked if you’re in Guyana and someone offers you a pear. It’s an avocado. Only accept it if you’re willing to eat a whole avocado without chips.

Santa Mission was another highlight of the trip. We took a 90-minute boat ride through the jungle in the middle of a heavy rain to get to Santa Mission. This site was secluded to say the least. My biggest fears in Santa Mission were panthers and snakes. We heard a story about a one-armed man who recently punched a panther in the face in Santa Mission, so we were preparing for the worst. Fortunately, we didn’t see any panthers. I still wonder how close we came to one though. We did encounter one viper on this part of thetrip though. We were hiking through the jungle to scout the marathon trail Tim will be running in November. I was the fourth person in a straight line, and I was the first person to see the snake coiled up in the middle of the path. That sucker was camouflaged pretty good. Only Tim was behind me to see the little dance I did to avoid it. It wasn’t the biggest viper I’ve ever seen, but it will get bigger as I tell the story more. For right now let’s call it 3 feet long. Kelly, the Peace Corps volunteer in Santa Mission, told us the village believes if you see a snake you have to kill it. If you don’t kill it, it will be invisible the next time you encounter it. We took our chances and left it alone.

 Before the trip, I read a lot about how to stay safe while traveling in Guyana. The basics were to never take minibuses, and only take yellow taxis because other taxis will kidnap you if you’re American. We took a lot of minibuses and most of our taxis were just people driving by that wanted to make a dollar. However, if I only followed the advice I read, we still wouldn’t have avoided our only risky driver of the trip. We took a yellow taxi on our way to the airport for our trip to Kaieteur Falls. The driver undersold all of the other drivers around and said he would take us for $5,000 ($25USD). This was about an hour drive, but this was still a pretty good price so we took it. This guy was the most offensive man I’ve ever met. He told us about his plans to rob the currency exchange downtown (it was a really bad plan), he told us he wants an American girl (which I assume he’ll kidnap), and went off about a few different races he doesn’t like. We’ll leave it at that. At the end of the ride, he demanded another two thousand dollars ($10USD). Tim handled it like a pro and said no because we agreed on a price. The driver immediately turned down a side dirt road and I my heart sank. I though for sure we were being kidnapped, robbed or murdered at that point. Turns out the driver didn’t know how to get to the airport and had to ask for directions. He still threw a fit when we paid him $5,000, but we were alive and didn’t have to see him again so we were relieved.

The trip to Kaieteur was once in a lifetime. A definite must-do if you ever find yourself in Guyana. It’s the tallest single drop waterfall in the world. It’s three times taller than Niagara Falls. We took a single prop plane carrying 12 passengers on the flight to Kaieteur. It was awesome and terrifying at the same time. John sat co-pilot and had controls in front of him. If our pilot had any trouble, John was our backup. Flying over the waterfall was one of the most surreal thing’s I’ve ever done. It was worth every penny.

Tim put together a great trip for us. He gave us the trip of a lifetime with limited resources. John and I made plans for this trip with the intent of sitting around and hanging out with Tim for two weeks. We were content to fish, play cards and sleep in hammocks. We had no expectations of travelling around the country and seeing everything we did. It’s two weeks of my life I’ll always remember. Thanks Tim.