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.