Vacation with Mom!

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. 

View from the plane!

Mom and I!

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.  

Where the otters use to live!

The "airport"

Our room!

Our guides pushing our truck to jump start it

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!!! 

Mom listening to the Howler Monkey

Our friend

I promise there is a Harpy Eagle in there

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!  

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!

You got blackout?

Blackouts are common in Guyana, they happen at any time of day or night and can last for a minute to all day.  At first when I asked around for the cause of the blackout (I was thinking down power lines or storms) I didn’t really get a direct answer.  “They just happen.”  “It happens when too many people are using the current.”  Or more commonly I got “me no no”.  But I persisted and finally got an answer that seems plausible from the unlikely source of 4 teenagers.  They told me it was because the pump/generator thing that pumps the current ran out of oil.  Now this seems likely but then my question is why does there seem to be oil on hand some days and others it takes 6-9 hours to locate the oil?  I should stop trying to figure out the logistics in this country and go with the flow as the locals do but it’s hard!

So what do you do in a blackout?  Well if it happens during the day, you go outside lay in the hammock and read a book.  It’s important to have an actual book because who knows how long the blackout will last and you don’t want to drain your phone battery.  Or you can do your shopping, or go lime (hangout) on the street.  It is also paramount that you text all of your friends to see if they have blackout too.  Your going to want someone to commiserate with, or if they are close go hang out at their house for a couple of hours.

Now a night blackout requires some other tools. Because there are no street lights a blackout at night means pitch black, you can't see your hand in front of you face black.  So you are going to want a headlamp and another light source if you have it.  The headlamp will free up your hands for your mosquito zapper and anything else you want to arm yourself with. The other light will help chase away the things that go bump in the night.  Next you want a good working knowledge of your light switches, because you are going to want to turn your lights off and seal yourself in your net.  There’s not many things more frustrating than tucking in your net, the lights coming on and you forgot to flip a switch.  You are also going to want to remember to turn on your fan in case the power does come on.  It’s also a good idea to plug in your phone in case the power comes on in the middle of the night.  The last thing is a hand held fan, postcard or something to fan yourself with.  Then you just lay in bed completely still so you don’t exert any energy, when it gets too bad fan yourself, and pray to the current gods that the power comes on soon. 

Cooking with Lucie; Spaghetti and meatballs with Soursop juice

Lucie had been trying to get me to teach her how to make spaghetti and meatballs since the first day we met.  Well last weekend we finally got around to making it.  I did have to look up a recipe as I do not make meatballs often.  For the most part we followed the recipe, but Lucie insisted on changing a few things.  To start with she wanted to blend onions and garlic together instead of chopping them, and I let her knowing it wouldn’t change the taste too much.  She also tried to put spicy pepper sauce in them (they use it for every dish) but I convinced her not to.   

For the meatballs we combined

• Meat
• Onions and garlic
• Italian seasoning
• 1 egg
• Bread crumbs
• Salt
• Carrots

Sauce

• Diced tomatoes (that we blended)
• Onions and garlic
• Carrots
• Italian seasoning
• Salt

While all this was cooking Lucie decided to make fresh soursop juice.  Soursop is a big green spikey fruit that grows here.  To make the juice you peel off the rind and deseed the fruit.  Then you throw the rest of the fruit in the blender with some sugar, vanilla essence, and water.  It is quite tasty!  

Overall I think the meal went over well!  Lucie and family seemed to enjoy it and I loved the juice!