Guyana is a country in South America and located at the Atlantic Ocean.
Impressions from my Vlog
Kaieteur Falls
The highlight of Guyana was the mighty Kaieteur Falls, the largest waterfall with a single drop of over 220 meters. He lies in the middle of the dense jungle and there are two ways to get there. On the one hand 5 days with boats and hiking or a bush plane. With the small propeller machine we flew through dense clouds and rain. It felt like a roller coaster and my stomach was mixed like a smoothie. Below us the endless impenetrable jungle, as dense as my hair after almost 6 months of world travel. From the air he looked powerful and to see the masses of water was impressive. We approached from lookout to lookout, it got louder and louder and I felt the water vapor in my face.
Georgetown
The capital Georgetown is like an open-air museum with huge colonial wooden houses and a drainage system with many rivers build by the Dutch.
Planning
- I was for 5 days in Guyana:
- Day 1: Arrival by plane from Port of Spain (Trinidad & Tobago)
- Day 2: Planning and booking of the flight to the Kaieteur Falls and sightseeing of Georgetown.
- Day 3: Applied for Visa to Suriname and relaxed.
- Day 4: Excursion to the Kaieteur Falls.
- Day 5: Departure over the border to Suriname.
- Spontaneously planning in Guyana is difficult.
- The response time to book the stay in the lodges in the jungle has a response time of about a week by E-Mail. It's not possible to just show up as the lodges are remote and they need to organize your food and water beforehand. I met a backpacker who tried to book it for himself. With the consultation of a tour operator the same price came out and they could organize it faster. It is not cheap, but the lodges are very remote. The chance to see rare animals like pumas in their natural environment is higher.
- For the flight to the Kaieteur Falls, the tour operator will charter a propeller plane. You have 13 seats and to make it worthwhile, the plane must be full. If they do not get it full, they work together with other tour organizations. For me, there were either no flights in the next few days or they were already full. Fortunately, enough interested people were found 2 days later. It is not cheap, but even cheaper than to spend 5 days by boat and hiking through the jungles.
- I used for my planning and can recommend the Lonely Planet for South America.
Transport
- Getting there:
- Georgetown has an international airport.
- There is a land border with Brazil at Lethem. Arrival is possible in Brazil by bus from Manaus via Boa Vista. Lethem is a good starting point for the lodges in the jungle. The road from Lethem to Georgetown should not be good.
- A land border with Suriname at Corriverton to Nieuw Nickerie. I use this border to travel to Suriname. A minibus picked me up at the hostel in Georgetown between 4 am and 5 am. The border is a river and on the Guyanese side I stamped out. Since the ferry was broken, I took a speedboat. This docked north of the official ferry port in Suriname. I had to go to the ferry terminal for stamping in, then I went by minibus to Paramaribo. On halfway to Suriname was a police check-point to control the visa and the stamp in the passport.
- There are two airports in Georgetown. I landed on the smaller one, which is right in Georgetown. The hostel arranged a taxi for 1000 GYD. Upon arrival, the taxi driver wanted to fool me and demanded 2000 GYD. I told him it is 1000 GYD and I that is what I paid.
- For transport between the cities are busses, but I don't have any experience with them.
Accommodation
- I found the most budget accommodation in Georgetown on AirBNB.
- I chose a hostel that only costs a bit more with a good location. It is called Apartments 145 (Hotels.com) and offers a 4-bed dormitory as well as apartments named place2stay. At the hostel, I only met one backpacker, it does not seem to be busy.