Guyana

Visited: October 2015

Duration of visit: 3 days

Capital city: Georgetown

Population: 770.000 (2015)

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

• Flying over Kaieteur Falls and feeling the power of falling water from the nearby cliff.
• Georgetown – very limited attractions, chaotic market with rush feeling and wide water canals that are filled with garbage.

Suriname and both Guyanas are usually not very high on priority list of the most popular countries to visit in South America. Neither were they for me, until I set the goal of visiting all countries in the world, or as many as possible, and they were among the very few remaining in the continent.

I visited Guyana in combination with Suriname and French Guyana in 2015, when I already had years of exploring, travelling and living on the American continent. In general, I had zero expectation, with the only goal to visit Kaieteur Falls.

I entered Guyana overland from Suriname. The biggest difference, that I noticed immediately, was the language. Official language in Guyana is English, but the accent is extremely strong and sometimes very difficult to understand. It depends somehow on the level of education and how much influenced is by Creole or the amount of other words that locals tend to mix in conversation.

The capital city, Georgetown, sits on the banks of Demerara river, on the Atlantic Ocean. The highlight of British colonial architecture is represented by tall, Gothic-style St. George’s Anglican Cathedral. The city itself is not very attractive, but I was still feeling quite safe walking around it.

Beside the cathedral, probably the most interesting place to visit in Georgetown was Stabroek Market. As hectic as any other market in Latin America, it offers a mix of locally grown fruits and vegetables with all kinds of imported goods.

Above the main entrance to the market is a steel tower, holding a four-dialed clock, which was installed back in 19^th century. Safety can be an issue, pickpockets are at work and robberies are a daily occurrence. I was careful as always, when moving around in marginal areas.

The most important reason or actually the only reason, why I came to Guyana, was to visit Kaieteur Falls – the world’s largest single drop waterfall by the volume of water flowing over it. The waterfall is 226 meters high when measured from its plunge over a sandstone and conglomerate cliff to the first break.

While many falls have greater height, few have the combination of height and water volume as Kaieteur. It is among the most powerful waterfalls in the world with an average flow rate of 663 cubic meters per second.

To put it in perspective against some famous waterfalls in the world; Kaieteur Falls is about four times higher than Niagara Falls and about twice the height of Victoria Falls in Zambia – Zimbabwe border.

The best way to visit Kaieteur Falls is by airplane, if you don’t want to spend 5 days and a lot of money for a tough overland trip. It was a short flight on a 12-seater aircraft from Georgetown, which landed only a few hundred meters from the waterfall, after we flew over it on a very low altitude. The waterfall is amazing. I was allowed to walk very close and approach it from different angles, always from the top.

Since we were in the dry season, the river flow was not at its maximum. But still, the size and the power of the water I was feeling, standing on the border of precipice over a gigantic mass of falling water, was thrilling. Even though the volume of the falls comparing to Foz de Iguazu or Niagara Falls is smaller, the view and the approach with an airplane is spectacular.

After an hour of observing and enjoying the falls I went back to the airplane, where I joined a group of mostly Russian visitors who live and work in Guyana, on the flight back to the capital.

Culturally closer to the Caribbean than South America, Guyana as the only English-speaking country in South America, is a home to a blend of cultures, famous cricket players, diverse geography, virgin rainforest and one of the most amazing waterfalls in the continent.

I didn’t have time, nor interest in exploring the country deeper, but being so underdeveloped in terms of tourism it could offer many hidden gems outside of the main coastal route.