Ok, doesn't look like too big a deal from my POV, my passport is stamped with "3 months" and I have a return ticket for that time so I should be good to go. Anyway, on to Guyana! The flight into Gtown was quite sparsely filled so I had the luxury of a whole row to sprawl out on in a tight fetal position. Dawn broke with a display of brilliant oranges and as we came in we flew over a packed blanket of trees; but what fascinated me was that even from a couple thousand feet up you could see there were many individual species of trees; one kind was more yellow-green and tended to be larger and taller than the others, and I saw a couple examples of one i would swear was purple, etc. A vast unbroken blanket; you could see wrinkles in the blanket which I guess were rivers, but no roads, no towns, etc. A Guyanese lady asked me to help fill in her immigration forms on the plane, and between my lack of sleep, her accent and the shaking descent of the plane, I only hope they don't drag her off to prison with the Mormons..
We landed, and the windows immediately fogged up, just like your glasses do when you walk into the Rainforest Exhibit at WPZ. departing the plane (the airport at Gtown is bigger than the Annai one, but it's about the size of the old Oxnard post office) you are smacked with the heat and humidity like walking into a warm wet washcloth. Went through customs no problem (and saw my friend from the plane, who gave me a cheerful pat in thanks, so I guess we fooled em this time) then walked out and met (after dodging the hopeful cab drivers) Waja, the driver I was instructd to meet.
We tore off down the divided road; everything is green and lush and soggy, and the people walk and wander and amble up and down both sides of the road, which is scary when Waja is passing a truck who is passing another car who is swerving around a bike and in the oncoming lane the exact same thing is happening; I stared out my side window (driver sits on the right and you drive on the left, like in the UK) and admired the scenery as we whirred past inches from messy death for someone, maybe us.
The houses enchanted me; not so much the stone and stucco ones you see in downtown Gtown, but the structures further out; The dutch started the area and put houses on stilts (about like having your house over your garage) but the practice has been kept up, and so it gives what really I guess are shacks, the freewheeling, comfy air of treehouses. Combined with that the fact that everything is overgrown with jungle it really looks like something out of another world. The houses are all patchwork and piecemeal of different materials and styles but the front upper room has windows with lattice or something on all three sides and you can see how cool and breezy and languid it is up in those rooms. People sit arond on these or on porchs, and if you have a fruit tree in your yard, you pick the fruit and set up a table in your front yard and sell fruit to passers by. I arrived in the AM around 7 so all the kids were going to school, or waiting for the bus with their parents, and each school has their own uniform, as Waja pointed out.
Gtown itself has more stone buildings but also some wonderful yet decrepit examples of old colonial work. There are piles of snow white fine sand everywhere, people use these to make into blocks for house construction. several men were carrying small cages holding small birds; these are used for 'racing', where you put your bird next to the opposing bird (in their own cages) and whichever bird chirps the most times in the shortest time wins. There are open air markets everywhere with all kinds of strange fruits and veggies, and there are open ditches and piles of trash, but there is no smell; certainly no bad smell. a faint smell kind of like a greenhouse, and when you pass a distillery or some food, a smell of that, but no everpresent reek like you get with, say, Tacoma, or LA. Birds everywhere, too fast to see details excep I did spot a cattle egret and heard a macaw this morning. saw a mongoose! horses and cows around. The lumber carts are all horse pulled and many of the horses are beautiful and well-groomed and clearly looked after. did not see any cats. The Gtown dog is about the size midway between a JRT and a beagle, a khaki color, with floppy pointed ears and a general air of casual boredom. going to post before my connection dies and i lose my saved work...