Adventures on the Rupununi part 1: The Road to Lethem

At the beginning of our service in Guyana, my housemate Corin expressed a strong desire to travel down to Lethem to see the rodeo that takes place every Easter. When I read about it in the guidebook, I was intrigued: an American had started a rodeo in Lethem, a dusty frontier town on the border of Brazil. It’s in a region of Guyana called the Rupununi, an area of savannah that contrasts greatly with the dense forest and swamps to the north. In the past, cattle herding was a major livelihood in this region of the country, and evidence of this way of life remains clearly evident even today. The rodeo provided the locals a way to show off their ranching skills. The guidebook made it sound like it was the thing to do over Easter, and that many people from the coast and different areas of the interior traveled to Lethem to participate in or watch it. I was interested in traveling to a different part of Guyana and seeing a different side of life from the one that I experience living on the coast, so I decided to join Corin and another volunteer in our group, Sarah, on the trip to Lethem.

The Easter break adventure began before we even got on the road. Due to communication difficulties and a last minute change of plans for the trip, we couldn’t book a seat on the more comfortable and probably more reliable Intraserve coach bus that runs between Georgetown and Lethem. As a result, our only (affordable) option for getting down to the rodeo was to take a minibus.  After living in Guyana for 8 months, I saw the sudden change in plans more as an opportunity for another true “Guyanese” experience instead of a major inconvenience.

We spent Wednesday night at Sarah’s house outside of Georgetown, and set out to catch the minibus in “little Brazil” the next night. We ended up on a bus with Charlie, our driver, his family, an Amerindian man wedged between my travel mates and me, and a rasta man (who mostly hung outside of the window the entire time because the bus had too many people). In all, there were 15 people and all our luggage on a bus with 12 seats. Overloading is actually a pretty typical practice for a normal minibus that travels shorter distances, especially in Georgetown. However, for such a long trip, it gets really cramped to have extra people in the back rows, and it probably led to some of our problems later on. After taking nearly an hour to load all of the Rasta man’s merchandise on top of our minibus, we finally set off from the capital around 8:30….

Loading up the minibus in Georgetown. Those boxes are the Rasta man's goods that he sold at the Rodeo.

Only to stop at the immigration office in town to fill out some sort of document called “the manifest” and present ourselves as travelers on the Linden-Lethem road (to be honest, I’m still not entirely sure why we had to do this).

We finally were on our way around 9:00 pm Thursday night. Besides a stop in town to pick up some fried chicken and a second random stop on the side of the road to drop a parcel (which is a pretty common occurrence when traveling anywhere in this country), everything went smoothly until we got to Linden, the last major town before the paved road ends. Charlie got lost trying to find the police station to present ourselves for the manifest, so we ended up driving around in circles for a little while trying to find it (mind you, Charlie works as a minibus driver on the Linden-Lethem road, so it would seem that he should know where it was). Eventually, we did manage to leave Linden around 11 pm and really get on our way.

The red dirt road south of Linden is rough. Because of the rain and the number of large “bush trucks” that traverse it, there are many large pot holes and deep tire tracks that make it hard to drive on for any vehicle besides the most sturdy 4x4. Most minibus drivers just speed down it anyway, but the going was slow for our bus. Charlie’s caution paid off: not long after we were overtaken by another minibus, we found it tipped over precariously on the side of the road because it had gotten stuck in a pothole. We of course stopped to watch an army truck and a group of men work together to get it unstuck, and then set on our way again.

We continued on for another hour or so until Charlie’s family decided it was time to stop for a food/ bathroom break in the middle of the jungle. This was my first true taste of the interior. It was a little eerie to be out in the middle of the jungle at night, with nothing around us but the trees and the sound of howler monkeys calling in the distance.

Our first stop in the jungle

The bus eventually made it to the first major truck stop on the way, called Mabura Hill, around 4 in the morning. It isn’t much more than a gas station, a bathroom, and a small restaurant, but arriving at place with an actual toilet and food to eat was a much needed respite from the road. The truck stop was shortly before the next manifest stop (which turned into a 30 minute restroom break in the pouring rain) in the village/outpost called Mabura. Mabura is at a junction in the road to another interior town called Mahdia, where Brazilian and Guyanese miners and loggers living deeper in the jungle converge to cash in their finds and stock up on supplies. Because of its location on the road, it’s pretty much the last true sign of civilization (i.e. the only place after Linden that has cell phone service) until Lethem. I didn’t realize it until the trip back when we passed this point later in the morning, but it seems to be an important area for the men who work in the interior.

We continued down the road at our sluggish pace, primarily because our bus was so overloaded with cargo and the girls in the bus wanted to switch spots often. At one point, Charlie realized that we couldn’t make it up a moderately steep hill. All of the passengers had to get out and walk up to the top, and a passing 4x4 towed our bus up to the top.

Getting some help up the hill. I think that white minibus in the background was the one that got stuck in the pothole the previous night

 

Eventually, we made it to Kurupukari crossing at the entrance of Iwokrama late Friday morning. Here, vehicles must be loaded onto a pontoon boat and carried across the Essequibo river. Because of the rodeo and the general increase in traffic along this road, we had to wait in line to cross. It didn’t seem like the wait would be terribly long…until two medium-sized buses full of tourists pulled up behind us. At first, this didn’t seem like it would cause a major delay. We happened to know several people on these buses, so their sudden appearance behind us was a nice surprise. We hung out on the bank of the Essequibo river, talking and getting caught in a sudden rainstorm.

The bank of the Essequibo river at the Kurupukari crossing

Pontoon boat that carries vehicles across the river

Another view of the river and Kurupukari village in the background

Drenched after the storm at the crossing

Loading the minibus onto the pontoon boat

It seemed like it would finally be time for our bus to load up, but then the two tourist buses behind us cut the line and got loaded onto the pontoon boat ahead of us. In all, we ended up waiting at the crossing for 2 hours, as the boat made a second round trip across while we watched from the bank. We did eventually make it onto the pontoon and across the river, and we were able to enter the Iwokrama forest in the early afternoon.

Iwokrama is a large area of protected rainforest in the center of Guyana. Known as the “green heart of Guyana”, Iwokrama is a project in ecotourism, rainforest preservation, research, and sustainable logging. We had actually hoped to visit and go on some of the tourist activities offered here as part of our Easter trip, but due to a lack of communication and the expense of staying in the lodges, we weren’t able to. Even so, I got an idea of the magnitude of the rainforest as we passed through. The enormous canopy trees stretched up towards the sky higher than any trees I’ve ever seen, and it was clear that the forest was dense just beyond the road.

The view of the forest from the minibus

Probably because of all of the activities that go on here, the road is relatively well maintained. Our progress through the forest was speedy. That is, until we encountered a backup of traffic in front of a bridge not far from the southern edge of the forest. A bush truck trying to cross a wooden bridge over a gorge broke through the wood and got stuck. There was space for smaller vehicles to pass it on the side, but just as we pulled up, another vehicle that was trying to pass had some difficulties and also got stuck. We were reunited with the tour buses that cut us in line at Kurupukari and walked around the bridge to view the damage and the progress of traffic. Eventually, the traffic was able to slowly start to get through again. After watching our minibus cross with bated breath, we finally got past the accident and were soon on our way. Unfortunately, the other two tourist buses were too large to pass, so they were stuck in the forest for several hours until the bush truck was moved.

It doesn't make a lot of sense that this truck was driving on the edge instead of the wooden planks in the center. Maybe it was and it slipped to the side?

Huge crowd of people watching the traffic jam on the bridge.

Around 5 pm on Friday evening, we exited the forest and entered the savannah of the Rupununi. The change was drastic; one minute we clearly still in forest (near the end it thinned out and the trees were smaller), and the next we were in grassy plains. It felt like we had suddenly crossed into another country entirely. This was the first time I saw Amerindian villages. The thatch roof buildings were dispersed throughout the savannah along the road.

We reached the village Annai and the next truck stop, called Rockview, shortly after entering the savannah. This stop was largely uneventful, until we tried to leave. The sun had set by this time (it was around 6:30 pm; the sun rises and sets quite early year round because Guyana is so close to the equator), and there wasn’t much light. Just as we exited the gate of Rockview, we hit a large rock. At this point, I was afraid that we would be spending the night there, because it sounded pretty bad. Charlie decided that the damage wasn’t enough to stop us, thankfully, but our progress after this point was really slow. The combination of the darkness, the poor condition of the road, and our bus issues meant that this last leg of the trip took 4 ½ hours instead of 2. To be honest, despite all the setbacks earlier in the trip and the fact that I managed to pick the worst seat on the bus (because of the position of the seats, I had to get out every time the people in the row behind me wanted to get out), I honestly was fine until this last leg. I think that the cramped seating on the bus, the lack of sleep from our frequent stops, and traveling over the rough road finally caught up to me. By the time we finally reached our hotel in Lethem at 11pm Friday night, I was extremely happy to lay down on an air mattress in a tent. We skipped the first event of the rodeo, a pageant that was taking place at our hotel, but after our arduous journey the rest was much needed. Total travel time: 26 hours.

And to think, all this happened and our trip had barely started! Coming up next: Adventures on the Rupununi part 2: Brazil and the Lethem rodeo.