Natural Wonder

We were in the car, on the way to the airport for another small plane flight back into the interior, when we got a phone call saying that the bad weather had delayed the flight. Guyana is a tropical climate so, whilst the rain storms are heavy, they don’t usually last very long. We headed back to Aoife’s to get a drink and wait. After 15 minutes we were on our way out again.

At the airport we met Margaret, the eccentric, talkative Scot who had arranged our interior trips and her husband Malcolm, who was our pilot for this day trip. Malcolm is an ex-RAF pilot, confident and very capable at flying aircraft. I think he’d have no problem flying a tin can powered by two hair-dryers, under attack from spear welding Amerindians.

Part of me doesn’t want to say where we went to today. It is the most beautiful, tranquil place I have ever been to and I don’t want to ruin it by encouraging too many to visit. But who am I kidding, the readership of our blog isn’t that big. We were heading to Kaieteur Falls, at 741 feet, the tallest single drop falls in the World. A direct flight would have taken us about half an hour, but first we took a detour to Baga Nara Island to pick up another passenger and then Malcolm treated us to a low level zip up the Essequibo river. Flying at 300 feet, we were level with the canopy top. Sarah isn’t a big fan of flying and it didn’t help when Malcolm tried to calm her nerves by flying no-handed. To make it worse, we’d flown along the river so that we could see the wreck of another plane that had crash landed on a sand bank in the river!

I was seated behind Malcolm and when we reached Kaieteur Falls, he told me to lean forward and reach my camera out of a window whilst he flew circles around the falls so I could some great photos. There is only a small airstrip near the falls. Flying in is the best way to get there as it takes two weeks over land through the jungle. This adds to its charm for me.

Once we landed, we walked to Johnson viewpoint. On the way, Malcolm pointed out the unique vegetation and animals that can survive here due to the spray from the waterfall. Tiny golden frogs live in pools of water that collect in the base of giant bromeliad plants. The graspid crab also finds a home near the falls as it feeds on the tiny frogs. The faunal highlight though was seeing a male Cock-of-the-Rock bird.

We had a better view of the complete height of the falls from Boyscout viewpoint. We had a picnic lunch here, listening to the roar of the water and watching blue macaws fly down the ravine. Then we walked through a small section of cloud forest to get up close to the waterfall. Being an untouched habit, there are no man-made safety barriers to spoil the view. We walked up the rivers edge, right at the point it hurtled over the cliff. To get the full appreciation of the drop, we lay down and shuffled forward to the edge of the rock so we looked straight down. It was dizzying. I was glad to be lying down as I sometimes get the inexplicable urge to see what it would be like to jump when I’m high up.

When we stopped at Baga Nara on the way back, we had a quick look around the resort, which was lovely. Back in Georgetown we took Aoife and Ben out for dinner by way of saying thank-you for having us and organising such a wonderful trip.