Travel Diary - Day Seven

Day Seven – Day Off

Now that I’m here I don’t really have quite as much to say about things. Well, three days worth should fill a page or two. Apologies to those who like a daily dose – I have been slack. But you’ll get over it. I’ve divided it into three days so you can get your money’s worth…

Guyana is HOT!!! Very HOT!!! Not just hot hot, it’s humid hot. It’s easy to understand why everyone moves so slowly. I move so slowly in the heat. Not that I’m complaining mind, it’s just taking a little getting used to after the frigid climes of Dunedin, although I do notice that the temperatures aren’t so frigid in the south at the moment.

Soooo…Saturday, thinking that having had a long trip and late night I might get to sleep in a little, I was woken by a phone call from Marlon Fraser, the programme coordinator here in Guyana, at 7:45am to say that he would be there to see us in about 2½ hours. I mean, come on, what’s with that? And to top that off he didn’t actually arrive until about 2pm! Arrrggghhh! Still, live goes on and we had a reasonably relaxing morning before lunch. The lunch special was rice with peas. Didn’t sound particularly appetising but it was my first real meal in Guyana, breakfast was a funny sausage concoction with bread and best forgotten. It turned out to be quite delicious, a mixture of rice and peas with a little mince, some ham and some chicken spread through it and finished off with a delightful blend of spices. I’ll have that again any time.

Marlon eventually turned up and brought with him a cell phone for each of us to use while we are here and our CWM provided pocket-money – the princely sum of $G20 000. Which is a lot less than it sounds but is still a not bad $US100 or around $NZ150. On the back of that we went to the market. Mostly because Helen wanted a hat and I wanted some jeans and a shirt – I thought I might try and blend in with the locals (haha). So we visited the much mentioned in all the travel guides Starbroek Market. Fortunately we had a local guide so we didn’t get lost. It was an interesting experience, although if you’ve been to one market you’ve been to most, just this one was a little dirtier and smellier than most.

There are dozens of small stalls, all selling similar things – little knickknacks, unbelievable numbers of hats, belts, girls tops, jeans and, of all things, bras. Then as you move through you come to the vegetable stalls and the smell begins to assail you. Just as you are beginning to wonder if there is a public health risk being in the vicinity you come to the fish market, with all the fresh fish sitting in the sun, being pawed over by people looking to see if that is the particular fish they want to buy. Doesn’t do much for my desire to eat fish while I’m here! Anyway, Helen found her hat, but we were struggling to find my jeans. I have come down about 4 inches over the last 18 months but we still couldn’t find anything in my size. We took a taxi to Office Max – a clothes and general goods store, go figure – and found nothing there.

The taxi was a funny story all on its own. Fernanz, the GCU (Guyana Congregational Union) communications secretary has been acting as our guide. He found a taxi (minibus that seats about 14) that would take us to where we wanted to go. What the rest of us didn’t realise was that the taxi was stopped on a corner – kind of hard to tell. So everyone but Fernanz and I got on and then the taxi took off. The others were looking bewildered in the back as the taxi was followed by a policeman with his siren on. The taxi finally pulled over and everyone had to get out. Turns out it is illegal to park on a corner and if caught the driver has to drop off his passengers, drive to the local police station, sit there for 5 minutes and then carry on – kind of like a rugby style sinbin. Anyway, it made for an interesting few moments, Fernanz and I caught up with the others – they were only a 100m down the road – we caught another taxi and finally got to Office Max.

I found a shirt, but no jeans so from there we set out walking – it was very hot and humid and made for rather laboured journey, especially as we were stopping at every second clothing shop to look for jeans for me, much to the consternation of the others who were showing signs of having had enough. Actually I was nearly past it too. Anyway – at our very last option in the general area we found something! Yay! Bought two pairs for the grand sum of $4800. Phew! Expensive pants! Nah, that works out around $34.50. So I was happy enough, and we set out for base to everyone’s relief.

After unsuccessfully fiddling with my phone to make an international text I managed to figure out how to make an international call (I can be incredibly dense when I put my mind to it!) and then I spent the rest of the afternoon asleep – catching up on some of what I had missed before going down for dinner which was rice and a KFC style chicken that was WAY better than KFC (sorry AK). We hung around and talked until about 8:30pm before heading for bed.