Just watched the guys trying to get the Land Rover started. This Land Rover is a Frankenveehicle made of three different ones, all various ages and colors. Two vaqueros on horseback in the lead, pulling the truck by ropes, Royal in the cab trying to get the engine to turn over, several guys from age thirty to an eager but not very helpful three, all pushing, and pursued by three dogs who are Helping. The truck made a half-circle of the compound and then out into the bush whereupon it finally started.

hot

Apparently this is a drought year; it is hot here in karanambu and hasn't rained since Ive been here, and the river is already as low as it usually in a month's time or more. Not a morning person, I'm having to become one in order to get some things done in the coolest part of the day. Miss Diane is back now and we are all glad to see her! I did my laundry in the river (the staff girls would do it but I dont feel right making them do that for me, besides my undies are shameful so I prefer to keep them private) and Buddy the otter helped, grabbing the clothes and helping drag them down as I dunked them, thats what we call the Rupununi Rinse Cycle. I am bitten all over (by bugs) and have a horrific looking patch of sunburn on the back of my shoulder; I think it actually blistered but I can't see it very well. Buddy likes to be rolled and wrassled in the water, especially if you splash a lot and put your head in the water and blow bubbles. No discreet sitting on the bank stuff. When he is hunting fish underwater sometimes you can hear him start squalling in excitement under water as he catches something; it sounds like when you are a kid and you blow bubbles in your milk while humming.

am typing this while stretched in a hammock, putting my feet up to give them a few minutes to heal. been a busy day; Devin the water-dog boy (water dog being what they call the otters) showed me how to clean the otter and raccoon pens. Devin is an Amerind, like most of the staff here, they are shy and quiet and English is a second language so sometimes communication is a bit tough. also Devin is a 16 year old (it ws his birthday that was the party last night, also someones anniversary) so he mostly communicates in mumbles anyway. Buddy (the otter) rambled around and over us while we worked, commenting on everything and letting it be know that HE hadn' had any BREAKFAST yet. He is the most amazing animal; I would guess he weighs 20 lbs fvdkd sorry, spider jst dropped out of the thatch onto me, dunno what kind it was, guss I will find out .... anyway, Buddy is just like a big, slow, surprisingly gentle and very stubborn ferret. He crawled into my lap, overflowing, and nuzzled, and he likes to have you pat him and play with his paws, and his jaws (which I have seen crush a pleco (armored fish) with ease ) are very gentle, he mouths you sometimes but doesnt bite hard. unless you do something he doesnt approve of, like try to take his fish or pick him up. I will try and get a picture later. I am totally in love and terrified something will happen to him; if a caiman or wild otters go after him I am afraid I will go splashing out into midstream with a knife in my teeth.

The thatch is full of bats and wasps, the wasps are 3 times the size of our regulr wasps, angry red-orange. One of them stung me on the head already. The bats are smaller than mice and very busy, at night especially, but all the time, there is a gentle shower of bat doots (like mice doots) and the occasional pee. Sometimes an entire bat.

buddy is fussin, i gotta go check on him, more later

... hes fine, he was curled up, sound asleep, squealing to himself in a dream. Heartmelt.

i guess its a good thing he doesn't like to be picked up, I would haul him around with me all the time.

Waja deposited me at the Sleepin guest house, a wonderful structure with a lovely room WITH AC and a faint smell of cedar which puzzled me until I realized the odd pellet in the sink was a urinal cake. I encountered the local currency as I gave the lady $100US and got back over $10,000 in Guyana dollars, then compounded my foreignness by giving Waja a tip which, I later discovered when I went to buy a popsicle, to have been not enough to buy a popsicle. Found the internet worked in my room and spent some time basking in the AC, guilty pleasure. Popsicle was soursop flavor, a local fruit. Id describe as faint creamy pear.
Met Diane! (its pronounced DeeAnn) the Madonna of the Otters looks just like her pix except she was on dry ground and she does look a bit more thin and frail, travel to london will do that. We ran errands, going to the bank, then to the OTHER bank when it turned out the check she had was for a different bank, then went to go visit some fellow named Ben who lived in one of those big houses with the wonderful front rooms which ARE just as neat inside, all hardwood and breeze and comfy, and his darling wife and baby, baby was down for her nap in her own baby-sized snowywhite hammock but woke up to entertain us with adorableness. Despite the fact that there is jungle everywhere, a lot of people have hanging plants up as well and I saw "plants for sale" at a couple places. After having some wine and blether with Ben, Diane and I went to the Cara Lodge to check Diane in and have a sammich. Sammich was tasty and served with fries and ketchup and something that turned out to be delicious fiery death, as I discovered when I spooned a dollop on my plate and Diane added one single drop of it to her ketchup. I fangirled helplessly at Diane, I think I offered to kill people for her but it might have been my lack of sleep, but she was full of stories to tell too so I listened, she has a wry sense of humor too. Back to my hotel to find the internet not working again, but I was waiting on a call from Margaret who is supposed to help me get to Karanambu (I will take the bus so I can escprt my luggage and Dianes) but fell asleep waiting for her call, despite the honking horns outside. At 7pm woke, it was much more quiet, only the occasional horn, and the chorus of insects or frogs or whatever outside sounds like jingle bells. thought about going out for nightlife or some food but didnt want to miss the call so went back to bed. at 1am dead quiet except for the jinglebugs. listened to them and fell asleep again. Up this Am as someones car alarm went off, bugs gone, horns back, fnally got internet again and a call from Margaret, bus was going to leave at 3 now is leaving at 5 so we will work out what im gonna do when she calls back again soon!

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...

Guyana!

here I am, hampered by some spotty internet and this new netbook keyboard which is almost, but not quite, the midpoint between my Blackberry and my regular keyboard so none of my typing skills work.
So, Seatac to Ne York was uneventful but crowded. New York, I was expecting it to be more like Heathrow and in fact it was quite small and cozy, even dull, if you're too terrified to leave the terminal as I was. I slept a bit on the floor at the gate where the Georgetown flight was to leave, I quietly passed out as the only but one or two people there and came to a couple hours later to find it full of Guyanaese whom, i would not put it past them, had been quiet so as not to wake me. They really are nice and friendly people, so far anyway... reminds me, Margaret was asking if I'd seen the days headlines about kicking all the Mormons out, I better check that...

Here I am in New York. Its crowded and humid and the internet isn't working; partly its just Gmail is down, but also the local boingo wifi seems to be dead, and so I'm typing this from an internet cafe which is charging me six bucks for the honor of watching the pages fail to load, over and over again. The flight was OK, although this is my first experience with them CHARGING to check a bag, AND charging for their nasty airline food, which I did not buy any of. I have my cash in one of those pickpocket pouches that sits across my tummy and so when I reluctantly pay for something I need to pull down my waistband and rummage around in there like a possum. I have experienced New York's cuisine and can confirm that they do a pretty good Big Mac. The food court in terminal one (Im actually leaving from terminal 2, but 2 looks less like a place you'd spend any time and more like a slaughterhouse designed by Temple Grandin in one of her less charitable moods, and has nowhere to sit, nothing to eat, and not even a whisper of failed wifi. WTF new york?) Anyway... the food court in T1 has a lovely view of the massed legions of the damned winding their way through Security, and you can look right down on them while sipping your overpriced beer. There are no actual signs saying "No Spitting". This is New York, after all.