I hate beyotches but love turtles!

May 5, 2012:  After a bus and few boat transfers, my friend Jason and I made it to the worn house of a man we arranged to take us to beaches of Matapica on the Atlantic Ocean – the endangered leatherback sea turtle delivery room.  Dropping into his unstable feeling boat that seemed to have a weight capacity of 3 anorexic men, we powered and pushed the boat through the swamps to our campsite.

While taking a extended walk along the beach, I saw many poorly filled turtle delivery craters, hoping that later in the evening we would be lucky enough to spot leatherbacks.  I have never seen one 3-dimensionally – not even at a zoo or watching cartoons, only in photos. According to National Geographic, these turtles are the largest turtles in the world at a length up to 8.5 feet (2.6 meters) and a weighing in around 2,050 pounds (916 kilograms).  Please note that a 1968 Volkswagen Beetle automobile comes in at a mere 1,900 pounds (861 kilograms).

At dusk the wind had eventually come to complete stop and so did everything else.  No more waves breaking on the beach, no more movement of the plants or trees…every became extremely, quiet.  Then it came…buzz, buzz.  Buzzzzzzzz, buzz - buuuuuzz, buzz.  Buzz buzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz buzz, buuuuzz buzz and a buzzzzzzzzzz – we were being attacked!  The initial strike by a squadron of female mosquitoes hit us hard…they  stormed the beach in greater numbers than the entire Chinese army.

As I retreated toward our boat, I began to quickly fight back, bathing myself with poisonous chemicals.  Carnage built up on my skin and clothing of the mosquitoes who were too slow to dodge my mammoth hands.  While powering into the heart of the Mosquito army, I tried to keep every inch of skin covered, sitting there wearing my hooded rain jacket and pants on as I was taking a forced piercing whenever the tiniest piece of skin would exposed itself.  I shouldn’t be whining since my friend sat miserably in his shorts and short sleeve shirt slapping the beewillickers out of himself as Ed Norton did in the film Fight Club. He might have been classified as mentally insane by an inexperienced psychologist, but Jason was not crazy…it was more so just a case of poor packing fueled by his hated for women mosquitoes.

With our current objective to locate caiman, though it didn’t matter to me if we saw any caiman – I have seen enough caiman over these past few years. Anyhow, I was more into paddling around the swamp in almost total darkness and sadly hoping to being an eye-witness to a nonlife threatening caiman catching mishap. 

The mosquitoes did not let up and continued to be unbelievably aggressive the entire night.   After almost 3 years of lugging around a head net for facial protection against mosquitoes and with today being perhaps the only day in which I would not have felt not stupid wearing it…can you guess on which day didn’t I have it?

By the end of the night, I saw a leatherback turtle stuck in the mud and even a green turtle laying some eggs.  The green turtles are smaller than the leatherback turtle but still really large.  They can grow up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) long and weigh up to 690 pounds (315 kilograms).  Standing above her, I wonder how they would taste if you fried one of her freshly laid eggs that she was burying?  Are they even edible?  With a less than one percent survival rate to reach adulthood…what is one measly scrambled green turtle egg?  It makes me curious that if supposedly almost everything tastes like chicken…would a green turtle egg also taste like chicken?

In morning I was tired after a night of buzzing mosquitoes sounding as if they were all inside my hammock, feeling as if my entire backside of the hammock can now be effectively used as a strainer from all the micro sized holes that were created from the monster beyotches who stabbed me in the back with their girly parts – scientifically these girly parts are called her mandibles and the maxillae - not boobies.  Where could all of the blood sucking vampires have gone to hide this morning?  Like the once world famous magician David Copperfield, they all seemed to somehow magically disappear.  As Brownsberg National Reserve provided me with the best sighting of insects, Matapica has  by far has been the best place to spot the most aggressive mosquitoes in South America. 

What I do to see zoo quality wildlife amazes me.  It is extremely rewarding, but the mosquitoes this trip reminded me that there is more behind a photo than that of the subject itself.  It is the uncapturable moments and feeling that swirl inside of me that an electronic device can not record.  Last night those mosquitoes tested my mental strength and I can truthfully say that, they won.

I hate beyotches but love turtles!

Two White Men and a Funeral

April 30, 2012:  An evening while staying along the Suriname River we were invited to a party for a corpse  we never met, nor did man who invited us – in short…we were funeral crashers.  It took over an hour to get to this village, traveling somewhere on a long boat, hiking somewhere and then transferring to another boat going somewhere.  I am glad I didn’t lose the group I went with since I would have had the most difficult time asking someone for directions to, somewhere. 

While sitting at an extended picnic like table in some sort of logged community center that served beer from a small opening in the wall, a random man from Guyana came over to talk to me.  Sitting awkwardly close, he would finish every sentence with “Man” and every other sentence making this “pff pff pff” noise such as Hannibal Lector made in film “Silence of the Lambs” when he said “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”  It sort of freaked me out as did my friend, Jason - as he so conveniently excluded himself from our conversation. 

The music started at 2am…only a mere 3 hours behind schedule.  I was sadly exhausted and ready to go back to the lodge before midnight.  Standing outside around all of the table clothed wearing woman, I felt as if I was drugged and could barely stay horizontal from exhaustion. 
The music did not encourage the typical mourning dancing (is there even a designated mourning dance?) or even the chaperoned catholic school sort of dancing…it was wining (aka dry humping while vertical).  A strange act to pull off while in public around kids, ancient aging adults and those in actually in mourning.  Learning how to do it while in Trinidad visiting a friend of mine for Carnival, I had a little experience practicing on her Mom, Aunt and her.  Standing around, fighting to stay awake, a few girls crept closer in their table cloth-like clothing, backing up into me for me to hump them – I mean to wine them like a South American street dog.  Wining tip:  While wining, make sure your pockets are empty.  I so awkwardly had a head lamp in my front pocket – so awkward...

Leaving to go back to the village at 4:16am our drunken group included a drunken boat driver suffering from impaired vision.   He had no need for that headlamp I carried around all night or any light for that matter – he did a great job going down the foggy dark river.  He wasn’t concerned since I am quite sure they don’t have breathalyzers in this part of the Amazon.

The next day we headed farther up the Suriname River racking up some more kilometers.  The deeper we powered up the Suriname River on the local super stretched long boat, the more interesting the people watching became.  Women were getting a little National Geographic-like as they began to lose their tops exposing their gargantuan utters that almost touched their ankles while the younger people seemed to not see the purpose to wear anything.  On the stairs of the river banks, the women were busy washing piles upon piles of dishes and what minimal clothes they might have had.  They perfected the skills of balancing big plastic buckets with dishes stacked so high it was as if I was watching a street show without the need to toss change in some sort of cup or dirty receptacle.

By the end of our brief exploration up the Suriname River and its communities, I counted 52 bites on my legs plus 1 on my frankfurter.  Perhaps a bath in DEET is necessary for future explorations. 

To...Somewhere

April 30, 2012:  When standing  on the side of the road with Jason in a small unpopulated area, I waved down anything with 4 wheels going in our direction.  From one vehicle to the next, we hopscotched to the  end of the road at the riverbank of the Suriname River.  

On our journey here, very few people spoke English.  If I knew Dutch or one of the many other indigenous languages that flooded this region, it would have been easier, but not as...interesting.  The plan was to go up to the Suriname River for a few days, spending the night wherever we could - preferably in a small Amerindian or Moroon villages.  Tossing our bags onto a riverboat, off we went to...somewhere. 

The Bible never said anything about God ingesting hallucinogens

April 30, 2012:  The past week was all about pulling knowledge from the brains of several agents working with Paramaribo tour companies and then ultimately dodging them and their exuberant costs for their hand held trips into the Amazon jungle, going freestyle.

Meeting an Australian with a natural born talent for drinking and cheating at Yahtzee, we 1st traveled to Brownsberg Nature Reserve.  This place held a collection of pretty much eventless, bland, calorie whacking trails while sleeping in an open shelter where we were able to hang our hammocks.

Even though the trails did not hold much excitement during the day, in the wee hours of the night, the assortment of insects, reptiles, spiders, poisonous snake and amphibians loitering around made the nature reserve one the most interesting free roaming collection of living creatures I have seen in South America.  The moths were spectacular, looking as if God ingested a batch of hallucinogens and forgot about his original guidelines on how these insects were going to appear - showing what you can do with lots of power and a chemically altered imagination.  Messing up so badly with some of these life forms and not wanting to erase what he has done, he decided to hide them in the Amazon with the hope that nobody in their right mind would see them… 

During my 4 day stay on the reserve, I was a successful paparazzi of insects, capturing over 725 moments including video footage of a murderous lizard stalking my leafy looking muti-legged subject before executing him.  Life as a human can be miserable at times but life as an insect is possibly one of the top 10 miserable lives on the planet. 

Wanted Part-Time: Two large butt cheeks

April 22, 2012:  Ringing the door bell outside a tall gated compound at a not that early 8:15am, I woke up the woman living inside.  Letting me into her compound and giving me the speech that if anything breaks I will have to pay for it, I handed over my driver’s license and signed a paper that contained a variety of linked letters creating words…in Dutch - meaning absolutely nothing to me except for that signing it would get me the bike.

My first stop was the boat dock so that I could cross the Suriname River.  Since not many people were traveling today, I had to wait for the boat to fill up with other paying bodies.  The boatman offered to take me at an inflated “white boy” express rate.  Let the unwanted negotiation games begin, I thought.  I managed to get a 25% discount (more than half the cost of a meal at Burger King) but still too expensive for a mangy backpacker.

Deciding to wait a little bit longer I was afraid to leave thinking as soon as I left, a bunch of people would show up seconds later to share the cost.  So every 5 minutes, I would say 5 more minutes and then another 5 more minutes and another and another, with this time munching cycle continuing to take more and more of the day away from me.  I intended to log a large number of kilometers to reach my time imperative extraction point at a location far far away.  So when  nobody magically appeared, I asked the boat driver if it is possible to ride over this bridge I saw in the distance.  He lifted his shoulders and said he didn’t know – the #@$% he didn’t.  Using my keen sense to point out a liar in languages I don’t speak, I left.  Too bad my superpowers are not as good with detecting lies escaping the lips of a beautiful woman’s mouth – or maybe, most of the time I do know…it is just that I don’t want to know.

Many thousands of circular leg motions helped make it possible for me reach Peperpot to see former slave plantations and a National Reserve where the birds were so loud, that it sounded as if I walked in at some voice amplified mega-grade schools recess.  It was great hearing all of the birds, it is just too bad I couldn’t see many of them since these super mosquitoes were shredding me whenever I would make an extended stop. 
 
My last stop of the day was in town of Nieuw Amsterdam – not knowing I was riding all this distance to see a fort till I actually got there.  Dehydrated and malnourished, it made it difficult for me to walk around in a straight line – a unfortunate common practice for me.

Needing a liter or two of soda to pour down my throat before heading to the shore to start the negotiation process for a boat back to Paramaribo, I visited a Chinese Grocery store.  Here I strangely felt an instant connection with the Chinese woman behind the counter ringing me up.  Maybe it was because she too didn’t speak Dutch well or just that we were both, foreigners.

Making it to my extraction point, a boat sat there waiting for others.   Perfect timing, I thought.  Getting to the balancing beam that was being used as a dock, I slung the bike on my back and sprinted doing a circuslike balancing act.  Just seconds before reaching the boat that had space for me, the man next to him signs him to pull away.  Why!?  The man who pushed the other boat off, then so kindly informed me of his gargantuan “rob me with a smile” fee to go across.  Okay, it was getting late and I sensed that he felt as if he had me.  Little he knew that I was a man with once again, the luxury of time and that I would rather have low crawled on broken glass naked than pay him.

Over an hour went by and it was still just me waiting.  When a different boat did pull into the planks dropping off passengers, I tried to jump on it but was denied boarding his boat after the other boatman said something to him.  That was until the man waiting for me to break down and pay his fee had to briefly pull away to let another boat in.  The guy that just denied me access on his boat quickly ran to the front of the boat as he was pulling away and wanted to know how much I would pay him.  Making it a price that would be worth the potential argument with the other boatman, I was granted permission to come aboard as he rooster tailed me across the river.
 

People with big butts have it made on long bike rides like this.  By the end of the day, my buttocks hurt so bad that I had to shift my weight on the seat from right butt bone to left butt bone.  I rode my bike from 8:45am till about 4:15pm…that is a lot for someone with not much meat on their cheeks.  Clearly I need to eat more candy, ice cream and sweets if I ever want to see my full potential as a long distance bicycle rider.  As for now…wanted part-time:  Two large butt cheeks.

"You think your bleep (aka shit) don't stink, don't you?"

April 21, 2012:  I somehow made it to the capital of Suriname alive and physically unscathed but a mental wreck.  A church authenticated miracle seems to happens here everyday in the Guianas if you make it to your destination unharmed when using public transportation.  A few uncorrupted police officers with a few radar guns could possibly substantially decrease the number of injured and/or dead bodies that litter the sides of the roadways every year. 

Exiting Guyana, immigration didn’t seem to notice the date of my entry stamp.  If so, he just might have seen that I overstayed my visit.  I probably could have made it across the border into Suriname if I had given him a Justin Bieber notebook with my photo pasted in it, name spelt in Crayons and a colorfully dated Hello Kitty stamp in the visa section on one of the back pages.  All that time, work and a legally enforced donation to the Guyanese government for an unnoted “hall pass.”

The fraternity row like streets of old town Paramaribo in Suriname is a refreshing change from the capital of Guyana.  Here I am no longer dodging the fecal bombs that were planted daily if not hourly by some of the drunken mindless homeless people who didn’t have access to a excrement deposit point - which would benefit everyone, giving them an option/opportunity to conveniently direct  their leaky parts in privacy. 

A porcelain toilet is a great underappreciated luxury and depending on the country, its function and looks can be an interesting subject to write or talk about.  Suriname has been unfortunately been influenced by an invention from a possible European Coprophiliac (a person  with an absorbing interest in feces or filth) who created an external siphon jet toilet.  Wikipedia defines it as, “A German style reverse flush toilet which holds the excrement out of the water. This could be to make inspection easier, to reduce splashing, or just tradition. It greatly increases associated odor and may require a brushing after use.”  Yes…there is more.  Wikipedia also states, “This reverse design prevents the occurrence of any splash-up which commonly happens when fecal matter plunges into the standing water in the standard designs (although substantial deposits may cause splash-up problems of their own). The disadvantage is that it also increases the associated odor and may require the use of a brush to remove bits of feces that may have "skid-marked" on the shelf.”

My biggest issue with the external siphon jet toilet is that it can severely limit the time to perform toilet-time activities such as the joy of reading, browsing pictureless magazines, planning future outings and or getting a leg numbing new high game score on some portable electronic gaming device. 

That was a lot of toilet information.  Wikipedia has been a great source of information to me when traveling.  It helps minimize some potentially strange questions over the years. 
I have had someone tell me before, “You think your bleep (aka: shit) don’t stink, don’t you?”  Ummm…I might have said “no” in my teen year, but now…I can confidently say that…it does, it really really does.

Georgetown…my Caribbean Prison

April 17, 2012:  I just finished serving my time in Georgetown, my Caribbean prison.  Today I was given my release papers from the Ministry of Home Affairs permitting me to leave Guyana.  With the stamp not yet even dry in my passport, I booked a seat on a van leaving at 4:00am that is going to take me at ungodly speeds to Paramaribo, Suriname.  I am hoping to get the front seat so that if I die, it will be a quick death.  I might though exercise my vocal cords for once if the driver feels too much need for speed – doing it after I stamp out of Guyana and into Suriname, just in case the driver or the others believe the van is better going at warp speed and I am abandoned on the road for someone else to pick me up.

I feel that I might be still a bit traumatized from the van accident I was in last month.  Every van ride since, it has become a common thing for me to do a death grip on anything solid as we do sloppy weave jobs going in and out of traffic on the two-lane highways.  Speed limit signs and big billboards plastered on the road stating such things as, “Reduce the carnage, reduce your speed” doesn’t mean anything to the drivers if they can’t read.

Guyana has given me one of my best unplanned adventures when I was in the interior.  I will eventually forget about the paperwork mess I experienced trying to leave here, but from the van accident to the time I arrived in Georgetown, will be a highlight of my South American trip that will surely get better and better every time I tell it.  Before you know it, the van will not just have flipped, but rolled 5 times and the boat on the river will have jumped a 20 foot waterfall not a measly 8 foot falls.  Goodbye Guyana and hellooooooooooooooooo Suriname!

Hiding in an empty gas tank…

April 12, 2012:  According to my current visa, I was supposed to leave Guyana 21 days ago.  Since not even a homeless person would sponsor me for an extension, I had to sponsor myself before my visa expired.  I filled out the proper paperwork, wrote a nice long handwritten letter and gave the Ministry of Home Affairs a frightening passport photo that was taken a while back.   Even though the photo has me looking like an upcoming serial killer with the shadows in just the right places, I wanted to save my good photos for visas that are plastered into my passport - not a file cabinet in the depths of some rundown office or some secret admirer’s purse.
 

It has been 24 days since I applied for an extension on my visa, wanting just a little more time to catch up with writing, sorting through photos and such – not 24 days…which is equivalent to about 3 years of accrued vacation time if I was working in the US.  Maybe the Ministry of Home Affairs are not finished going through databases of criminals’ photos, or having troubles reading my letter that was not in a font - it must have been a long time since they received something completely produced by a good ole ball point pen and not an inkjet or laser printer. 

I will continue to sit and wait for my paperwork to be processed so that I can leave Guyana by walking across the border…instead of the fetal position, while hiding in an empty gas tank inside a compact van.  Even though I have been trimming down on the calories if this has to be an option, I would much rather prefer to save this position for after a kick to my twins, or a nice bout of food poisoning…not a border crossing.

The beach of the future…Plastic Bottle Beach

April 9, 2012:  I went to an amazing air show this afternoon, displaying 1000s’ of tethered aircrafts along the seawall in Georgetown…looking like confetti frozen in the air.  This city is internationally famous for its aerial show it has the day after Easter Sunday.  Wikipedia states the history of this practice is not entirely clear but it might be symbolic of the Risen Lord.  Asking around a bit, it now seems more a tradition to fly kites and have a family picnic than a religious day.  Since I had some extra time, I thought that I would count them…finding it hard to recall where I left off after a necessary blink from time to time to moisten my dry eyes - not to mention being meaningless after I passed 1025 kites, hence 1000s’.

Most kites here were the simple handmade kites that were purchased off the street.   For those with just a little more money to spend on a kite, you could personalize it and have one plastered with stickers.  Yes, it is normal to see a 5 year old kid holding a kite with such famous characters such as Mickey Mouse or Dora the Explorer, but not so normal when the stickers are of a women wearing a bikini in questionable positions.

One group of individuals had built a wooden framed kite that was at least 18 feet tall and 12 wide.  When I saw it go up I knew it would not be long before it came crashing into the ground as it needed more speed and a larger area than a cricket field.  When the 8 overweight men reached the edge of the fence, with no more space to run…the gigantic kite began to do a dive without any possibility to come out of what was inevitable.  My eyes and my grey piece of internal matter were quickly calculating where the point of impact was going to be.  If my calculations were correct…the large wooden kite was going to miss the crowd of people and smash into one of the cars parked in the field.  The excitement grew…I was about to witness what damage a kite of this mammoth proportions can do to a new car.  5…4…3 seconds till impact…2…1 – BOOM!!!!!  It missed – I sometimes really hate being wrong.
 

I discovered a wonderful beach of empty plastic bottles while walking along the seawall.  As far as I could tell, there was not a single message in any of them.  With more and more plastic bottles being produced daily, this is the beach of the future.  There is nothing like burying your kids on the beach with plastic bottles or building a plastic castle. The plastic bottles are much less dangerous and dirty for the fragile kids of today – playing in the sand is so 70’s anyhow.

The perfect pit stop

March 29, 2012:  Time has gone by really fast the past few weeks.  I arrived in Georgetown with the intention of getting all of my documents and visas in order so that I can continue forward with my trip, attempting to do it here since English is their primary language.  I also need a little break from moving every few days to a new city as I did when I was in Brazil. 

I have been trying really hard to discover the beauty in Georgetown, but I am struggling to do so. Georgetown seems to be a noisy horn ridden dirty hole that is lurking with an oversupply of taxi drivers barraging you everywhere you go.  In mobs they stand in front of stores, restaurants, banks or anywhere there is a large group of potential victims.   

My hotel is above an extremely popular establishment called Jerries bar and restaurant.  It seems to be THE place to be for those with an aspiring career to one day become a professional Karaoke singer.  With 9 too many Karaoke nights a week, I am happy when those individuals in their 30’s to 40’s park their cars that resembles a teenagers vehicle more than a adults.  Equipped with huge speaker systems, the noise effectively drowns out the singers from 10pm to 4am - causing most car alarms in a 50 meter bass blast zone to chirp or scream in anger due to disturbing its sleep.  From the neon lights, to the creative stickers plastered on the vehicles windows, ranging from a giant window sized $100 US Dollar to ones saying such things as “Hard Cash” or “Gigolo” makes me feel sorry for the woman with such a questionable gene pool.

Perhaps the limited gene poor is why some women are in desperation mode to outsource, using the most horrid pickup lines, making me question their true profession even though they are dressed like Jackie Oassis.  A good example would be when I was walking down the street with a 1-liter of soda and a girl stops me to ask, ”Are you going to drink that alone?”  I smoothly stuttered, ”Ye – ye – ye- yes.”  Another time was when I was looking to cross a busy intersection in the middle of the day and a girl says, “Were you looking for me?”  Not meaning to sound rude, but I put my head down, quietly saying, “No, just the building over there.”  I am just not use to woman who use dialog straight out of a pornographic movie.

The parade field across from my hotel is home to a few handfuls of drunks that have occupied the bleachers.  The pleasant aroma in some way reminds me of an open pit toilet that nobody has bothered to cover.  The soil is being nourished daily by the natural fecal fertilizer deposited by the cats, rats, dogs and men that live here or just passing by…making this field probably the most fertile spots in the entire city of Georgetown and quite possibly the country. 

With all of these things to say about Georgetown, I still think this is a perfect pit stop for a week or two.  When you don’t feel pulled to do anything in a city but to walk and get something to eat and perhaps see a movie now and then, there couldn’t be a better place to relax and catch up with my writing. 

It has an engine, a tail, two wings and it flies...

 

March 17, 2012:  It has an engine, a tail, two wings and it flies…so technically it is a plane but metaphorically it was shight.  When it was my turn to board the plane for the one hour flight to Kaieteur Falls, the only available seat happened to be right next to our yellow toothed pilot.  Unfortunately…Unfortunately, I had no other choice but to sit up in front with the pilot.  Just because I look like a full grown adult on the outside doesn’t mean that I can’t feel like a full grown kid on the inside, as I sat behind the controls of the plane with a good sized smile.  “Why haven’t I ever requested the front seat before?” I thought.  For my future flights with Delta Airlines, I will have to make sure that when I do online check-in, to click on and to reserve the seat next to the pilot. Yes, there may not be as much leg room as the other seats on the plane…but, I will deal with it.

The highway in the sky today took us though a canyon and above the narrow rivers that snake through the ocean of trees, which resembled the entire 20 different colors of green crayons that Crayola has in its extensive product line.  Looking out the large and plentiful windows that surround the cabin of the small plane, made me feel more connected to the sky than the typical aluminum cloudlike passenger planes, with the front loading washing machine like windows.

Kaieteur Falls is one of those places I have never heard about until I started traveling around South America.  Travel guides and Guyana’s tourism offices boast that Kaieteur Falls it is the largest single drop waterfalls by volume in the world at 226 meters (741 feet), though after doing a little numbers research…I doubt that it is the largest, but it is definitely beautiful. 

The falls itself offered me no surprises, it was just like the photos, but the views from flight and spotting a few Cock-of-the-Rocks was the unexpected pleasant bonus. 

Me so TALKY. Me talky you long time

March 16, 2012:  A decently dressed 72 year old man, who was walking past the park bench I was occupying this afternoon, stopped and asked if he could sit and eat his lunch.  Since the bench was as big as a stretched limousine and doesn’t belong to me, it would have been hard to say, no - though I did turn my body in the other direction to not encourage conversation.

Not even 2 minute later, he started to talk to me.  At first, I thought that he might be a lonely man needing conversation, so I didn’t stop him.  My mind was preoccupied; therefore I gave him 40% of my attention with 1 - 3 word answers if a response was needed.  Then it happen…he started to heavily quote the parts of the Bible that talks about giving to others, as I could clearly seeing where he was going with the conversation.

After 30 minutes, when the older man finally finished his sales pitch, he asked me for $20 USD.  When I didn’t give him anything (I get on average about 7 requests per hour) his true personality tore thru his mask as he stopped quoting the bible and cursed me with the whip of his careless tongue.  He stood up, angrily calling me a thief because I stole his knowledge and blessings without giving him anything – this was strange…I don’t recall ever inviting him to sit with me. 

This man is a good example of a social prostitute, on how he was using a skill such as quoting the Bible in an unworthy way for financially gains.  I feel I am pretty good at stopping conversations with a common prostitute, since it is usually obvious on what they do by their work clothes.  But, it is the social prostitute that is the hardest to stop, because “what if” you are wrong and they are just being friendly?  Anyhow, if I ever did decide to pay a social prostitute for their services, I would much prefer that they follow the dress code of a common prostitute with the typical over the knee pleather boots and an extremely short environmentally friendly skirt and top. 

Jet boat takes flight down waterfalls

March 14, 2012:  I left the dredge today in a jet boat that was more like a fighter plane morphed with a stunt boat.  Since the stickers on the window said “Jet Boat” I figured it was powered by a jet engine.  So I asked like a moron if there was a jet engine in the boat.  The man I asked responded with a big smile and said “no.”  Okay…then the sticker on the window was inaccurate – I should have slammed a lawsuit on them false advertisement, but instead I smiled back and felt that maybe I should keep some of my questions to myself or learn to reword them when in doubt.  Even though there was no jet engine, what ever it was, it was huge, getting all 20 of us up to the speeds it did with ease. 

The pilot sat in the center of the boat with the throttle control in his left hand resembling those of a fighter jet and his side stick that rested in his right hand with a red button conveniently on the top of it.  Perhaps it was for the fixed guns on the roof than I happened to miss, to detour any not-so-smart pirates.  I already asked one moronic question…I didn’t want to make it two.

I always seem to do pre-sinking, pre-flipping, pre-crashing and pre-everything planning.  It is just what I do and today was no different.  While doing my pre-sinking planning I noted that were no lifejackets in sight.  It wouldn’t have been a good situation if we were to hit something that might have forced us to jump ship.  So I was relieved that after we hit a large UUO (Unidentified Underwater Object) that only the skin of the passengers eyelids opened and it wasn’t the skin of the boat.

At one spot in the river after doing a sharp turn, the pilot put on the afterburners as the engines did a deep hum and we took flight down these waterfalls.  Since the water level on the river is currently high, I was told that today was easy by a frequent flyer.  When the water level is low, he said that the people are told to move to the front of the boat to balance it out for the 8 +/- foot drop.

I am so thankful to have been in that van accident 2 weeks ago.  If it never happened, I would have arrived in Georgetown later in the afternoon on March, 1^st missing one of my greatest unexpected adventures!

Life on a Brazilian River Dredge

 March 14, 2012:  Ten amazing days ago, when I was suppose to leave with the Bedford returning to Georgetown, I instead accepted an invitation to stay with 4 Brazilians living on a river dredge in Issano, who are on a quest to find gold.  With this said, my plan of omitting Portuguese out of my mind until I get back to the Amazon River had to be reworked, since all individuals on the dredge; spoke, thought and dreamt Portuguese. 

Though the dredge was inoperable during my stay, they did anticipate it will be functional in another week so that they can leave the riverbank, to go fishing for gold.  For 24 hours a day it will operate, stirring up the soil below as it is sucked up through a long 10 ton metal straw, where the yellow powder is separated and the rest is released back into the water.  In a way I am glad it wasn’t working when I was there, letting me overload my senses of sight, hearing and touch while on the river without the machinery contaminating it.  Where we were, also gave me a nice opportunity to observe an Indian family, who pulled up along the riverbank on a canoe then set up a makeshift home for a few days before eventually moving somewhere farther along the river.

Since I grew up outside the “Motor City” not a mining town, I didn’t know anything about mining when I arrived on the dredge.  I did what little I could to help the Brazilians such as teach them English, translate, provide them with many laughs and gave them an extra set of hands when needed.  It took me 14,400 minutes to come to the realization that I should cross gold prospector off my list of possible future careers if I want to make it to the age of 40, as dodging serious injury seemed to be a daily event for me - not recalling when in my adult life I have become such a magnet for large metal objects wanting to smash into me.

A short walk away was downtown, Issano.  It was a living ghost town with 1 police station, 1 school, 1 gas depot, 1 medical clinic, 1 store and 2 kiosks.  I was told that back in the 1980’s it was a booming town, but now…it has slowed down considerably.  The town itself only houses a handful of Indians, with the majority of 500 +/- Indians living upstream in communities along the river.

It is supposedly common in these areas to be addressed by names that were not given at birth.  I myself was given two different names along the way.  “White Boy,” was what I was called by the truck drivers and for those on the dredge it was, “Gringo.”  It was no problem for to call someone “German” or “Alligator” but I myself had a difficult time with names such as “Blacky” or “Fat Man.”  I guess it takes some getting used to.

Meeting a local man who is an independent prospector, he invited me to go with him on a boat up the river to meet his friends that work for small and also big mining operators who pull the golden power from the land.  I have been to plenty of mines in my lifetime but most of them are underground where it is hard to see the damage that is hidden by a blanket of untouched soil.  The type of mining I saw today floored me because I it was so easy to see the open bleeding wounds mining has done to such a beautiful region of the Amazon.  It is not just what it does to the land that is disturbing, it is what it does to the people who caught this disease called “gold fever,” leaving there families for months at a time in hoping to strike it rich.  In their search for the golden powder, a quite a few of them found more than that…they found malaria and even worse, dengue fever in the process.

With Malaria being the leading cause of death in Guyana, the first few days I was being a good paranoid North American boy doing what I was told by the brains at the CDC (Center for Disease Control).  So I would wear a long sleeve shirt, pants, socks and shoes in addition to coating my skin with a nice shower of 40% DEET every few hours - when almost everyone else wore nothing but shorts and sandals.  Then I thought…enough.  I was still careful but no longer did I wear my long sleeve shirt in insane temperatures, nor did I wear my shoes, due to getting tired fighting off the thief hiding in the mud who tried to steal them every time I took a step off the dredge.

I stayed on the river dredge for the past 10 days, but needed to pry myself away today.  With the complete work crew arriving tomorrow, there would be an oversupply of hands and limited space.  Even though I didn’t understand a lot of what was being said during my stay, it was hard for me to leave today…I will miss all of them and their kindness.

Mud…lots and lots and lots of mud

March 5, 2012:  The journey to Issano that was suppose to take a total of 2 days from when I was picked up, took a unexpected 5 days to deliver the engine – not including the time it will take to return to Georgetown.  The driver told me that the last section of the road could be bad when I joined the team, but really, what is…bad?  “Bad” doesn’t really say much, with your only options being:  bad, okay, or good.  What I should have asked was, “On a scale 1 to 100…how much over 100 is it?”

Days of breaking down, getting stuck, breaking down, climbing hills with a winch from tree to tree and then breaking down again, became the norm. I figured out that taking photos would be better than me standing there and trying to help when all I was really doing was getting in their way, hence the 1000+ photos.

In the back of the Bedford, I did my best to brace myself during the ride.  I wrapped some webbing connected to the canopy’s frame around my one hand and with the other hand; I locked it around the canopy’s frame like a gymnast on the high bars as I prepared myself for the bumps, the out of control branches, the possibility to be squashed by the shifting cargo…and then of course, the unknown. 

Nobody intended be trapped in the jungle or to miss so many meals after we left the road stop while in route to Issano.  In a span of 56 hours, I had a smidgen of chicken served with pumpkin curry and rice, 9 crackers, 2 biscuits with a hint of jam, 1 coco-bun and 750ml of fluids.  I felt so weak at times I struggled to walk a straight line and even to do something as simple as take photos.   

If the Bedford didn’t have to make a delivery, I can’t see normal people, just deciding to just drive to Issano.  I don’t think I will ever have a better off-road experience than I did the past few days.  When we finally made it to the small town of Issano, I felt as if we were stuck in the jungle for months.  I would have paid any price for just water…and unlike a few days ago, I would have been happy to eat a fish head with 6 eyes, let alone two. 

Van flips in Rainforest…and I am 97.8% unscathed

March 1, 2012:  Hitchhiking from the side of the road at 3:30am in the Iwokrama Rainforest, I waited for an hour until I saw the 1^st set of lights come tearing down the road.  Getting a van to stop that was transporting people to Georgetown, I threw my backpack on the roof and off we went as if we were evacuating a town that is about to be nuked.

At a high rate of speed the driver would whip the wheel to the right and left in an attempt to dodge the large craters that speckled the road.  I scrambled for my seatbelt only to discover what I already knew…there was none.  Getting annoyed with the drivers need for speed, I held onto a metal crossbar in front of me and laid my head on the backpack on my lap, thinking that it was going to be a horribly long 10 hours.

Feeling the van pull rapidly to one side, I quickly looked up and a blurred headlight lit tree was all that my brain could processed before I felt the van going up on two wheels - hoping that it was just temporary and that all four tires were going to be shortly back on the road.   Tilting farther and farther in slow motion we crossed the plain of no return, flipping over on its side as we began to slide along the road.  Knowing that the road was narrow and surrounded by trees and ditches, my body clinched as I hoped not to hit or drop off or anything.  The slide seemed as if it lasted for minutes.

Once stopped, the musical choir of moans and the sound of a screaming engine filled the interior of the van.  All 11 of us eventually climbed out of the side windows that was now located on the roof, which proved to be quite difficult for those with broken bones.  Seven people sustained injuries, yet I was one of the fortunate ones to have just enjoyed flipping a van and walking away from it 97.8% injury free.

Today my backpack flew off the top of the van and took a tumble along the road, sustaining no damage – and Spirit Airlines can somehow manage to break my backpack in just one flight.  What do those union workers really do with the luggage?

Tossing all the pieces that fell off the van to the side of the road, we flipped the now crooked vehicle back over on its wheels.  After sending those injured needing medical attention in other vehicles going back in the direction we came from, we pilled our luggage in the now empty seats and continued on to Georgetown. 

Very little changed with our drivers…still driving as if dooms day is here but now in a van that had just flipped with a big air leak in the front tire.  I am not a mechanic, though I no longer thought the vehicle was safe…hoping that it was going to breakdown so there was no other option but switch vans.  Getting a flat rear tire my hopes partially came true.  With the sliding doors no longer working…we now needed to exit through the windows like Bo and Luke Duke from the American TV series, “The Dukes of Hazzard.”

When changing the tire, this was the perfect time to switch vehicles.  With two big trucks pulling up to see what was going on, I jumped ship and climbed in the back of the Bedford (a ex-military truck) transporting an engine.  I was later invited to travel with them to drop off an engine and some other mining equipment deep in the interior at a small gold mining town.  In less than a 2 minute’s time, I rewrote my travel plans and said, why not?  I have the time and this is my free ticket to see it all from the back of a Bedford.

Pocket knife drawn…

February 29, 2012:  Hitching a ride from Annai to the Canopy Walkway, I was dropped off in the southern end of the dense tropical Iwokrama Rainforest at about 4:40am – sort of early to be in an area where I was told that a large population of jaguars and anacondas live.  I love seeing wildlife at close range, but this morning when I was walking to the lodge, I was alright not seeing any.  Wearing my headlamp, I had my pocket knife drawn in one hand while I was eating a coconut muffin with the other, making it to the lodge after a short brisk 1.2 km walk down the road.

The first morning there I made it out to the canopy walkway, which is a series of suspension bridges that hangs 30 meters (99.9 feet) above the forest floor.  On the walkway I spotted with the help of some hard core birders and there 100,000,000 power scope, 2 species of Toucans I have never seen before and some beautifully colored birds.  It is always nice at the beginning of trip to see such amazing wildlife since then on the rest of the trip…everything else can be considered a bonus.  For me, it was the monkeys, giant rats and some strange looking insects. 

While doing a hike one afternoon we heard a noise and my guide said it was a Tapir.  Of course a Tapir, I thought.  He couldn’t say a feral pig since not many people would be excited seeing such a common animal.  Rule #34 in the “Pocket Book on How to be a Good Guide” clearly states:  Claim any loud and untraceable noise to be either a jaguar or an animal that a member of the group wants to see.    

I was able to save some costs with a little begging and agreeing to sleep in my hammock in the dining area after everyone went to bed - though later finding out that the cockroaches must have also had the same agreement.  Waking up at 3:00am to independently search the tropical forest for the nocturnal animals, there were about 20+ cockroaches scattering on the floor with a few even springing off my backpack, looking as if they were enjoying using it for a diving board.

My last night at the lodge, we heard a megaton tree fall near us.  There is not much you can do except, hope that it isn’t going to land on you.  After it landed the manager at the lodge said it was far away…about 200 meter or so – far for him, sounded kind of close to me.

My Green Pea pod

February 26, 2012:  In the wee hours of the quiet night I woke up in my hammock, alone and in an open hut made solely for protection from rain.  My hammock is excellent for sleeping outside because it has a mosquito net conveniently sewed to it with a zipper, protecting me from all little things...though this green pea pod is the worst place to be if I needed to quickly get out it for the bigger things.

Something didnt feel right lying there and in a strange way...I felt like I was being watched.  Peeping out from the side of hammock as would a child, I scanned the area with my flashlight thinking everything you shouldn’t when not a soul is around you.  Thoughts of a jaguar making me a human piñata or even worse, the pasty dead girl from the movie, “The Ring” standing aside the bushes filled my head.

While lying there, the late night choir started with a solo, as a bird began a chirping rampage with a savaged dog later joining in.  Perhaps they were warning me that something was out there…but what?  I seemed to be letting my imagination having the best of me here in Annai, scaring myself again for the second night in a row.

In the morning, I went for a hike climbing a nearby hill overlooking the town and the surrounding area.  I happened to see a family of howler monkeys and two birds in the process of murdering some large ants with their two facial swords.

I had the intent to eat something healthy today instead of Guyana's famous coco buns, so I walked to the road stop that serves food to the town drunks, domino players and they can now add, mangy backpackers.  When ordering the fish stew, the man at the restaurant told me that they can make chicken for me.  “Why,” I thought…if fish stew is the menu of the day, there is no reason to make me anything special.

Well, the stew was shight.  I got the head and fins.  A joke? - I am not sure.  But, if I remember correctly my friend Martha from Colombia loved the head, the eyes, and even its cheeks.  I didn’t seem to have the appetite tonight for eating something’s eyes so I ended up just eating the coco rice and went to bed.  Next time, I will stick with chicken - there is no way possible to mess up chicken…never once have I ever received only a head with wings.

Gee, I love hindsight…but not dirty condoms

February 25, 2012:  Double checking everything to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind before I checked out of my posada…I found something under one of the two beds.  It was a rouge condom and I know it wasn’t mine.  It was nasty but if I left it…then it would be assumed it was mine, and who happened to be the only other person in the room with me?  My first night here, I shared the room with a Brazilian backpacker whom I met on the bus after it broke down.  Oh…did I forget to mention the Brazilian backpacker was a guy?

Yep…not needing any false speculations, I grabbed it with tissue paper and flushed it.  Flush after flush, it went nowhere.  It sat there, floating proudly at the top of the bowl - proudly.  It wasn’t going anywhere so I needed to go in and now retrieve it.  Grabbing toilet paper again, I pulled it out of the bowl and put it the only other place I could think of besides my pocket and that was in the water tank behind the toilet.

Thinking about it now…why didn’t I just tell them to check under the beds because a condom was there?  Gee, I love hindsight. 

Me? A Conman?

February 24, 2012:  Crossing the border, I didn’t realize that there wasn’t a cash machine in the town of Annai.  Needing to exchange my emergency cash from US Dollars to some more colorful currency, I went to the only bank in town.  It was an old small one story farm house, with the porch that conveniently served as the waiting room.

Once being granted access into the living room and after looking at the exchange rates a little more thoroughly…I thought that maybe it was time to get rid of my American Travelers Checks that I been traveling with since April of 2009. 

While I was forging my very own signature to the way I did it 3 years ago, I was told they couldn’t accept my travelers checks because I didn’t have the receipts for them – in which the company that issued these checks states that you shouldn’t carry them together.  The bank told me this after countersigning 3 checks.
 
I clearly understand policies and procedures but sometimes small town policies and procedures can be created from small town damaged brains.  The manager here was just a puppet of the bank, as I tried to reach in and pull some of his strings that were connected to the hand of his puppet master.

After the manager called the main branch in Georgetown to request leniency, he called me back into the bank and needed to know about my life history, how I financed this trip, what countries I have been to and what I do for a living.  After about 2 hours of trying to cash the checks I signed when I first arrived in the bank, they were not convinced that I was not a conman...later implying that my Passport and other documents could all be created to cash these travelers checks that could be forged – for a mere $150 USD?  I think the bank might have watched the movie, “Catch Me If You Can,” one too many times…it is time to watch something different.

With the nearest bank in Guyana being perhaps another 10 hours away, I exchanged my US Dollars and left.  Where is an intelligent ATM when you need one...

(Please note:  Photo courtesy of  www.IMDb.com)

The Men in Black

February 23, 2012:  Today is the day I said “Adeus Brasil!” and “Hello Guyana!”  When I was at the Brazilian border crossing I had to see the Federal Police to get that magical stamp for my passport that I am always talking about.  Entering the office, I made my way to the desk of a Tommy Lee Jones look-alike who was dressed in all black attire with his gun holstered at his hip as he was standing there with another man in the same attire.

Not even in 0.345 seconds after grabbing my passport he asks me, “Where is your immigration form?” in Portuguese.  This was almost word for word on what I was hoping not to hear, as soon as THAT form decided to go separate ways while I was down south in Salvador.  This itsee tiny piece of paper that is the size of two book marks placed side-by-side has a cost of around $100 USD and a long day of going back and forth to the nearest town to pay a fine.  I smiled and responded to his question in broken Spanish, using the proven; I don’t understand your language strategy – thus limiting their questions.  But…he responded in English, as I was later sent to the corner to sit as he decided what to do.

Time moved slowly as Tommy Lee sat at his computer terminal taping away, searching for something.  About 6 others came and gone as I patiently sat there hoping not to hear the words,”you need the form.”  After a little more squinting at the computer screen and a few more looks at my passport, he grabs the exit stamp and slams it into my passport, authorizing me to legally leave the country without me needing to make a dash out the door for the Guyana border.  There was a long stretch of road between the two and with the size of my bags…I wouldn’t have made it too far anyhow. 

Walking across the border of Guyana and into the small cowboy town of Lethem (2,500 people), I could not have arrived at a better day because today was the annual festival celebrating Guyana becoming a Republic in 1970. 

I must say that is great to be somewhere that English is there first language but I unfortunately I don't at the momment understand them very well with their strong accent - if they could only have subtitles...

Is it only illegal to club baby seals?

February 21, 2012:  I walked around Manus today during Fat Tuesday in search for food.   This was not a good time to walk alone in the empty streets looking as if most people evacuated the city.  Everyone that was mingling by the port today seemed like they had criminal intentions.  The people were a mix of escaped fugitives, future fugitives, drunks, drug users and those who are not mentally stable.
 

One man thought it was acceptable to throw a large 2x4 piece of wood at parked cars, crosswalk signals and even me while he was ranting about something as he stumbled down the middle of the empty main street.  What I should have done, would be to pick up the 2x4 when it came tumbling by me and club him like a baby seal to teach him a lesson about manors – but, this is not in my job title as a backpacker to do what this sad man’s parents should have done at birth. 

How can people think they can get away with behavior like this?  But, the real question is…how do we let people get like this?

I wanted to self punch myself right in the ear

February 19, 2012:  This year I chose to celebrate Carnival in the Amazonian metropolis of Manaus. I ended up inviting myself and joined a nice group of 10 or so backpackers plus two Brazilians for the evening.  I didn’t expect a gigantic celebration here due to being in the Amazon, but it was huge to my standards.

Our first stop took us to a stage where I was mesmerized watching one of the main samba dancers who was loaded with so much energy.  She was there to help keep the general public in step to the samba line dance, which seemed to be much more faster and 1,344,595,302 times better than the line dance to the gosh forsaken song, “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus .  Even the tattooed gangsters were line dancing samba and they still somehow maintained a tuff look about them – it was hilarious.  I myself did not have much physical energy tonight to learn the steps in 2 minutes. 

Our next and last stop was at the parade grounds to see a gargantuan parade.  It started at 8pm and didn’t finish till about 5am.  Some of the floats were unbelievably large, complex and expensive.  I may never look at a parade in the same way ever again after this.  By the time we left, there was still many families watching the floats go by as they were putting their kids through homeless school, having them practice making a temporarily bed out of a wooden bench seat. 

While at the parade, I wanted to self punch myself right in the ear because I didn’t bring my good camera do to fear that it was going to get stolen.  I need to loosen up a bit…if not, I will continue to miss great opportunities for some decent urban photos.