Roadtrip from Guyana to Brazil

Guyana, The Land of Many Waters, is a country about the size of England with less than the population of my local town. The result? Around 70% of the country being untouched by humans, creating a rich and diverse area of some of the most spectacular rain forest still alive today. And no, it's not in Africa but near the top end of South America.

The rain forest is one of the biggest attractions for tourism to the country and rightly so. It's a lush, noisy, steamy location that I find irresistible. I'm going to tell you about a little trip a mate and I took to get from the capital of Georgetown right down to the Brazilian border. It was a great journey and a glimpse into the jungle. I took subsequent trips into that dense green home but this was my first adventure.

To get through to the Brazilian border can be done in a number of different ways. You could fly (too easy), drive a motorbike (too strenuous), cycle (too crazy) or get a seat on one of the logging trucks that chundered down the mud paths. We opted for a variation on the latter. Not a truck, but a seriously maxed out SUV that carried precious goods and people back and forth.

The first part of the trip involved making phone calls to find out when one of these SUVs was heading off. I left my name and number with a couple of likely candidates and waited to see if any would get back to me. About 9pm at night we were settling down to a nice cool bottle of Banks beer when the phone rang. Could we be ready in 15 minutes? Looking at that frosty glass of beer we collectively sighed and said no worries. One bottle of beer downed, some clothes jammed hastily in a bag, we were off. First stop was at KFC. Now normally I wouldn't dream of eating here but the beer had loosened my morals and we got a big bucket of chicken each. These buckets saved our lives. Stupidly, we had only packed a couple of bottles of water and some cheese sandwiches which, as it turned out, wouldn't have been enough.

The first couple of hours was along nice clean tarmacked roads. Progress was good and I felt myself getting sleepy. A sudden turn off the road soon woke me up and so started the journey. We bounced and bobbed along a dirt track before suddenly plunging into thick woods. The temperature rose dramatically and the windows started steaming up. The noise rose in proportion to heat - who would have imagined a few thousand insects working together could create such a racket? I peered through the steamy windows and kept a look out for Tarzan swinging through the trees. Night quickly overtook us and the jungle was almost pitch black. Our driver stopped at a small shelter and decided that this would be a good place to sleep for the night. He curled himself up on a wooden bench and promptly fell asleep. My friend and I chatted for awhile and then tried to get a few hours of sleep ourselves. Sleeping overnight wasn't actually part of our plan so neither of us had a mosquito net so we had to settle with smothering ourselves with some heavy duty insect repellent. This kept the mossies away but our severely tingling skin kept us both awake. We alternated between having listless conversations, listening to the cacophony of the jungle and catching snatches of sleep.

After an eternity of scratching at insects our driver woke up, scratched and stretched before heading off into the jungle. "Nature" he called out and we decided it a good plan to leave him to it. 10 minutes of nature later we were off again after a breakfast of congealed chicken bits. The sun started to rise and the jungle took on a whole new meaning. My imagination got the better of me and I strained my eyes trying to spot all the animals I'd read about before coming. I spotted nothing but jungle and water. Water, and then more water. The rains of the previous days had turned the roads into rivers and soon the SUV was ploughing through the water like a mini submarine. The driver started looking a bit distracted and eventually admitted to us that we had gone wrong somewhere. We backtracked and took another path, or river. The SUV was equipped with a small winch at the front and I discovered that this was to pull us out of the unseen ruts caused by logging trucks. Every time we got stuck, the driver would have to climb out of his window and wade through to a nearby tree that looked strong enough to pull us out. Progress was slow and I started thinking to ration the chicken out a bit more sparsely. It was probably my water logged mind playing tricks on me but I'm sure I started spotting animals walking two by two on their way to the Arc.

We eventually reached drier land and the driver put the pedal to the metal in order to make up lost time, stopping only once to pull out a great behemoth of a truck that had got itself wedged into its own rut. I used the opportunity to have some Nature myself but got distracted by a large and shiny spider making its way directly towards me and my own little river. I hastily got back to the safety of the now decidedly chickeny smelling SUV and we were off again.

We hurtled along through the jungle for a bit longer before bursting out onto the savannas. It was so odd to be out in the open after being enclosed by the canopy for a day or so. Our eyes squinted as they adjusted to the extra sunlight and we raced along dry and dusty roads, obviously rain free. We overtook some local Amerindians on their way home, some unknown creature over one of their shoulders sporting an arrow or two. "Wild meat" our driver explained to us, which basically can mean anything wild that moves.

After the high drama of the jungle, we quickly got bored of the endless flats of the savanna. There was very little to see other than shrubs and low trees so when we reached the border town of Lethem it was with a sigh of relief. We got out, stretched and found a place to stay the night. Choices involved one guest house or the police station. Luckily for us the guest house had space (but shower involved standing outside under a big bucket). After being coped up in the SUV for almost 2 or 3 days it seemed odd to be out and I felt oddly exposed. We shook hands and said goodbye to our driver. Despite not speaking much, I felt that we were all really close after the journey and it felt a little sad to see him go.

The next day it was a quick pontoon over to Brazil and we were in a new country, open for new adventures and off we went to explore. We hitched a lift from a passing truck and it was as easy as that.

After a couple of weeks exploring the dusty towns of North Brazil we were back in Lethem. We decided to fly back.