The problem with vacationing with a Mother who is a great
photographer is that you take very few pictures… So I will post the pictures I have, and beg
Mom to post hers soon!
For those of you who don’t know Mom came to visit me here in
Guyana. It had been the longest I had
gone without seeing her. But like all
adventures with my Mom there was no time to sit back and reconnect. We started out with a quick flight in a
terrifyingly small plane to see Kaieteur Falls.
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| View from the plane! |
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| Mom and I! |
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| The falls! |
The falls is the largest single drop falls in the world (I think). It was magnificent.
The next day we continued our journey to Guyana’s interior
by boarding yet another small plane headed to Region 9, Karanambu. Karanambu is famous for rehabilitating Giant
River Otters, however there were none there now. It was the most primitive place we stayed and
probably the most fantastic. Karanambu is located in the savannas about two
hours from the rain forest. We were
picked up at the airstrip by a truck and hopped in back for a 15 minute ride to
the homestead. We were the only two
guest there, a theme that followed us through our journey. Here we saw tons of animals, the most
fantastic was the Giant Anteater. The
Giant Anteater is mostly a nocturnal animal so we started our journey early in
the morning as the sun was rising. We
hopped into the truck with about 4 extra guys, who’s jobs we later figured out
was to run after the anteater and corral it closer to us. We ended up spotting two along with some
foxes. We spent a lot of time on the
Rupununi River looking for caiman, birds, and other wildlife.
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| Where the otters use to live! |
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| The "airport" |
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| Our room! |
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| Our guides pushing our truck to jump start it |
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| Anteater vs Man |
After Karanambu we headed to the Iwokrama Rain Forest. It was a spectacular place! Our cabin looked over the Essiquibo River,
right in the middle of the rain forest.
There we saw plenty of monkeys and birds! We even got to hear a howler monkeys call for
10-15 minutes. We also saw the famous
Cock of the Rock bird. Our best finds
were when we were driving in and out of the rain forest. While driving in we got to see a family of
Giant River Otters playing. Then on the
way out we got to see a Harpy Eagle!!!
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| Mom listening to the Howler Monkey |
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| Our friend |
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| I promise there is a Harpy Eagle in there |
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| Otter!! |
Our next location was in Annai at the Rock View Lodge. Rockview is located in the savannah and is a beautiful
little oasis. I think the highlight of
Rock View was the owner and his brother.
Collen is an expat from England, he came to Guyana as a VSO (England’s
version of Peace Corps) in the 60’sand never left. His brother just recently joined him and
together they are a delightfully British duo. Our schedule for each day
included tea time and drinks with the duo! We went to Surama a neighboring town to
experience Amerindian life and try to spot more wildlife. We didn’t see much at Rockview but the
experience was worth it!
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| Checking in at the Annai airport |
After all this we headed to New Amsterdam to show Mom my
life. Mom took pictures of me doing
laundry, buying things at the market, hanging out with other volunteers, my
school, interacting with the teachers ect.
So for all those people who wanted to see what my day to day life is
like Mom has your pictures! She did get
to experience the joy of the wifi not working for days for no reason!
All in all it was a great exhausting trip! It was amazing to see my Mom and get to hang
out with her. I am eternally grateful to
her for all of her support throughout my Peace Corps journey. She is an amazing Mom and friend and I can’t
wait to see her again!
