Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
- In: development | Environment | General | guyana
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After finishing the course with our final workshop last Friday and saying goodbye to Chris, who had an early morning flight on Saturday, Matt and me hit the road for our longest trip away from Georgetown yet: a four day excursion to the far south of the country.
The Rupununi – or, the much cooler sounding Region 9 – is where Guyana’s rainforests suddenly stop, replaced by vast open plain savannas. Our first destination was Surama, an Amerindian village containing around 250 inhabitants dotted among a few square miles of open savannas which are encircled by the rainforest covered Pakaraima Mountains.
We stayed at their eco lodge – you can’t really stay anywhere else. The set-up was a bit like Arrowpoint, which I blogged about in a previous post, but more community friendly and homespun. It’s run by locals and the cost of staying there covers board, guides, food – which is locally sourced – and the bumpy 20 minute motorbike ride from the Georgetown to Lethem road (which by the time you’ve reached Iwokrama rainforest, which Surama is just south of, is a wide brown heavily potholed track – guaranteed to rock you to sleep in the wee hours of a twelve hour overnight bus journey).
The setting (see above) was pretty spectacular. And on a hike up Surama Mountain and canoe trip along the nearby Burro Burro River with our guide Milner we spotted spider monkeys, macaws and toucans. Best of all, a capuchin monkey crossed the river above our boat using the forest canopy, pausing at one point as if to say hello.
After two days at Surama we then hit the savanna proper at Annai, a 45-minute bike ride south. To save cash we slung hammocks (they don’t really do camping in Guyana due to the insects) and ate our meals at the Oasis truckstop by the main road. Due to the proximity to the border it felt much more Brazilian here, even if the local Amerinidians speak English with a Caribbean twang. As two white guys who’d chosen to stay here rather than the nearby ecotourism resort Rock View we were very much the local curiosity. But it was still a fun place to hang out and snack on Brazilian food as reggae blared out of the speakers.
Unlike Surama we didn’t need a guide to climb the nearby mountain and the views of the vast savanna landscape, with vultures circling overhead, were unforgettable. Though not quite as good as those from the 12-seater plane which flew us back to Georgetown.
Waiting to board by the Annai airstrip I got chatting about tourism with a chap called Eli who runs the nearby Rewa eco lodge, which like others in the region, models itself on Surama. As I mentioned in my Arrowpoint post, tourism in Guyana is very much in its infancy, not helped by the price of internal flights, the lack of travel options to neighbouring South American countries and the tendency to peg prices to the Caribbean. But Eli said things are definitely getting better – ten years ago you simply didn’t get travellers in this part of the country. The recently completed Takutu River Bridge which links Lethem and Bonfim in Brazil should also improve things.
Whether the eco lodge tourism model can support larger numbers of tourists is another matter. It will be interesting to see what happens in years to come. In the meantime I’m just going to enjoy that slightly selfish buzz you get when you visit an amazing place you know that few other travellers have been to before.
I’m back in the UK now, getting over the jetlag. Matt is in Mexico, extending his trip away a little while longer. When he returns in September we will all meet up to evaluate the project. I’m looking forward to that and I’m sure we’ll do more posts on the subject, but right now I’m having a nap…
Going up the country
Posted on: July 29, 2009
- In: Environment | General | guyana | The team
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You take it for granted that you can pick up a Lonely Planet or Rough Guide to pretty much every country under the sun. Guyana, however, has only one dedicated English language guidebook to its name, by Bradt. The first edition came out just last year. In short, unlike its South American or Caribbean neighbours, Guyana is not on the tourist trail – either for backpackers or tour goers.
Matt pulls his best Martin Sheen Mekong Delta face
But that’s certainly not through a lack of amazing sounding places to visit. The Bradt guide, which I managed to track down in Foyles on Charing Cross Road a few days before I set off, describes the country as “South America’s hidden gem”. Flicking through its beautiful colour pictures of Kaieteur Falls (the largest single drop waterfall in the world), rainforest covered mountains, endless savannahs and shots of the country’s abundant wildlife – jaguars, leatherback turtles, giant anteaters and more exotic birds than you can shake a pair of expensive binoculars at – you can see what the writer’s on about.
But a lack of interior development (90 per cent of the population lives along the coastlands, which make up 5 per cent of the land), a monopoly on many internal flights and the fact that prices are more in line with the Caribbean than Latin America means that many of the trips on offer don’t come cheap. A return day trip to Kaieteur, for example, costs around $220. Still, since we’ve arrived, locals and volunteers have been urging us to take a trip into the interior to see the real beauty of Guyana.
Because one of our four-man team, Pontus, is only here for two weeks, last weekend was his only chance to properly get out of Georgetown. We decided Kaieteur was a bit steep for a day return (you also apparently don’t get to spend too much time at the waterfall) and the southern savannahs and Shell Beach (where you can see prehistoric turtles lay eggs) were out because we’d spend most of the weekend traveling. So we chose an eco-friendly jungle lodge called Arrowpoint situated in the Amerindian community of Santa Mission on the banks of Pokerero Creek – partly because it was just two hours journey south from Georgetown, but mainly because it came highly recommended by everyone we met who’d been there before.
Although the price included all meals and activities, Arrowpoint wasn’t exactly cheap, especially when you compared it to similar sorts of getaways in the backpacker friendly countries of South East Asia or South America. But from the moment our speedboat whipped off the wide and brown Demarara River into a winding tree lined creek we knew we’d made the right choice. Over the next 24 hours we mountain biked along jungle tracks in search of a plane wreck, went kayaking, got up at the crack of dawn to go birdwatching with a local guide (spotting, from afar, macaws, hummingbirds and vultures) and did some moonlight animal spotting.
The undoubted highlight, though, was swimming in the black, tannin heavy waters of the creek. Late on the first night we spotted small spectacled caiman in the same bit we’d been bathing in. Although we were assured that they don’t go for humans, I definitely swam a bit more gingerly the following day.
There are several other eco-friendly lodges like Arrowpoint situated in Amerindian areas and nature reserves around the country. Matt and I are planning a visit to another one towards the end of our stay. No doubt we’ll do a post about that too.
In the meantime, check out some pics Chris and I took at Arrowpoint on our Digital Guyana Flickr page.
Manatees!
Posted on: July 22, 2009
The West Indian Manatee, is the largest surviving member of the Sirenia mammal order which also includes Dugongs and Sea Cows. They live in the West Indies, normally in shallow coastal areas, but sometimes in rivers and estuaries.
Manatees grow up to 3 metres in length and weigh between 400 and 600kg. Full grown ones eat up to 30kg of sea grasses and plants every day.
The West Indian Manatee is surprisingly agile in water, and individuals have been seen doing rolls, somersaults, and even swimming upside-down. Manatees are not territorial and do not have complex predator avoidance behavior, as they have evolved in areas without natural predators.
You might be wondering where I am going with all this?
Well, a couple of days ago we went to the manatee pond in Georgetown’s central park. We’d heard that people sometimes fed the manatees, so I threw some grass into the pond. Soon we had about 10 manatees eating out of our hands!
Here are some pictures:
Apparently, the ‘mermaid myth’ originally comes from ancient Greece, where sailors saw manatees and thought that they were beautiful women. This is something that keeps cropping up through history. Sailors get pretty desperate after months at sea, I guess.
Christopher Columbus seems to have had better sense. He mentioned that ‘mermaids’ had been sighted several times on his trip to the new world, but noted in his log that these mermaids were not quite as beautiful as the sailors had told him.
I guess he didn’t like bald, fat girls with wrinkly skin and large moustaches.
- In: Environment
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Last night we watched Guyanese tv news for the first time, and a significant portion of the programme was dedicated to Guyana’s newly launched Low Carbon Development Strategy – Transforming Guyana’s Economy While Combatting Climate Change.
As 75% of Guyana’s land is covered with pristine rain forest, the main focus of the strategy is, unsurprisingly, about conservation and the role of rain forest in combatting climate change.
It is estimated that Guyana’s forest could contribute around $580 million a year to its economy. But only if they were to cut it down.
Extensive logging would, according to the report, be economically rational for Guyana, but not so for the rest of the world. Standing forests absorb large amounts of carbon from the atmospehere and forestry causes 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, conservative estimates place the annual value of the Guyanese forests to the world at $40 billion, significantly more than what Guyana would benefit by exploiting it.
However, the report says:
No trading markets exist for these environmental services – and as a consequence, individuals and companies in rainforest countries face powerful incentives to deforest. In turn, national and local governments face political pressure to use the forest for economic and employment benefit. Reconciling this tension between protecting rainforests and pursuing economically rational development is the core challenge that must be addressed to make forests worth more alive than dead.
So, how is this going to be done?
Well, the report says:
With the right low-deforestation economic incentives, Guyana will avoid emissions of 1.5 gigatons of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent which includes other greenhouse gases) by 2020 that would have been produced by an otherwise economically rational development path. These incentives will be generated through interim forestry payments from Guyana’s partnership with the Norwegian Government and other sources.
It’s a bit unclear from the online strategy, but from the tv programme
last night, the aim is to set up an international scheme in which Guyana would be paid not to cut down its forest. The initial payments will come from Norway, but Guyana is currently in discussions with other countries with the aim of having something finalised by the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
I hope they are successful.
Digital Guyana 