When Fear Causes Bad Decisions: A Scary Border Crossing Story

It sounded easy: take a short taxi ride from the village of Lethem, Guyana to the Takatu River, hire a boat to cross the river, then wait for a bus on the other side (Brazil) to go to the Bonfim bus terminal with connections to Boa Vista.

I took the taxi and hired the boat, no problem. On the Brazil side of the river there was a graffiti-covered plywood bus shelter with a crowd of greasy guys and presumably prostitutes hanging around. They all glanced at me when I arrived and wearily put down my pack, but no one said hello despite my hopeful smile. A taxi driver came up and gestured if I wanted a ride. No, I said with confidence, I was waiting for the bus. Soon two men arrived by boat from where I'd just come from across the river, got in the cab right away and drove off.

About twenty minutes later I was still waiting for the bus and was now feeling the gaze of several of the men on me as I uncomfortably sat alone, the only foreigner and obviously a tourist. I smiled at the prostitute sitting next to me and asked her if she knew when the bus was coming. She said "soon," very reassuringly and patted me on the knee. Meanwhile several more groups of men crossed the river from the Guyana side and snagged taxis that were arriving regularly, about every 15 minutes or so.

After about an hour a thought crossed my mind: "No one knows I'm here. I'm at a dodgy border in no man's land all by myself. If some threw me in a car and drove away right now no one would ever know."

A guy who had been hanging out by the taxi area seemed to read my mind and came over to me.

"The bus should be here soon," he said in English. "The one that was supposed to be here an hour ago didn't show up but that happens sometimes." He was friendly. This made me feel better.

So I waited another hour. It was the afternoon now and I still had a long trip ahead of me. Plus I was starting to feeling scared. There were some pretty sleazy people at the bus stop and I knew that I was looking more vulnerable by the moment.

I started planning what I would do if it got too late to get to Boa Vista. I'd have to go back across the river to Guyana but I wasn't sure they'd let me back in without a Brazil stamp in my passport. What would the border guards do with a lone woman at sunset who had nowhere to go and was not legally in any country?

Just then the boat guy who had taken me across the river saw I was still there and came over looking concerned.

"The last bus to Boa Vista leaves at 4 pm!" he said. "What are you still doing here?"

I explained that I was waiting for the bus. He told me to wait a minute then went and talked to several people by the river.

"There's no bus," he said. "The border guards are blocking it from coming in so you have to take a taxi to the border patrol office then hopefully catch a bus from there."

It seemed obvious to me now that I should have just taken a taxi like everyone else and wondered why I had waited so long. Sometimes fear makes us act dumb - I had been in a semi-paralyzed state not speaking the language and being in a spooky part of a new country. Out of my daze, I got a taxi to the border office for an easy $2 and got stamped into Brazil; the bus arrived within minutes and whisked me to Bonfim. At the Bonfim terminal, I managed to hop on the last bus to Boa Vista just as it was pulling away.

The guidebook and all those helpful people had given me the wrong information. At the border office I talked to the guards and found out that the bus was often blocked there and sometimes it didn't run at all. Luckily, I was re-writing the guidebook and was able to change the details in the book. I guess it's my job to find out all these things the hard way - hopefully my bad decisions in the face of fear will save many people the trouble and desperate questioning I went through that day. As for me, I hope I never get stuck at a bus stop like that ever again.

Note: This picture is of the Essequibo River, not the Takatu River. I was too worried about my safety to take out my camera and take a picture at the border! Still, it looked kind of like this but with more people, more boats and a ghetto bus stop.

Diane Mc Turk: Savior of Giant River Otters & the Coolest Woman I Have Ever Met

If you haven't noticed by now, I really love Guyana. Every day I spent there was an unbelievable adventure, but meeting Diane Mc Turk, an ageless woman who has devoted her life to saving the Amazon's endangered giant river otters, was a highlight.

Diane owns Karanambu Ranch, a cattle ranch, wilderness preserve and eco-lodge at the north of Guyana's Africa-like Rupununi Savannas. Getting there requires either flying or driving overnight from Georgetown then taking a few hour-long boat ride. While visitors are lodged in comfortable, brick and thatch bungalows, it's still not for the faint hearted - the entire time I was there a snake was coiled in the rafters above my bed.

"Hope you don't mind not having the place to yourself," laughed Diane's nephew when he showed me to my room. "Don't worry, he's not poisonous."

Before seeing Diane, visitors usually get to meet her orphans, the playful giant river otters who wiggle around the grounds like happy dogs. Diane often shows up at meal time with the air of a teenager who'd rather be off with her wild and crazy otter friends, but once she starts talking in her documentary quality voice, she gets as carried away by her charm as everyone else and starts to enjoy herself. By the end of a visit most folks have heard wildlife tales that only a lifetime in the Amazon could produce as well as some surprising stories about Diane's 30 years in England when she worked as an actress and at London's Savoy Hotel.

"Men fall in love with her and women want to be her," Diane's niece who manages the ranch told me. "She is irresistible."

It's true, Diane with or without the otters emanates free spirit and a child-like magnetism. She stands as straight and slim as a fashion model and manages to look elegant as she pulls a canoe through the murky, caiman-filled river, feeds dead fish to her otters or wrestles the critters with her strong, apparently bite-proof arms.


Through her un-countable years of work Diane has rehabilitated over 40 otters and her ranch has been used as a research center and springboard for the animal's protection. But nothing beats getting out into the water with Diane and her "kids," Getting to play and frolic in the water with the otters was one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life.

Here's a short video I took of Diane and her posse while I was at the ranch:

Guyana Tales: Getting Friendly With the Neighborhood Caiman

After an over-night bus ride on a pot-holed dirt road through the Amazon jungle my father and I arrived at Iwokrama Field Station, hot, encrusted with dust and exhausted. The river, though opaque and brown, looked incredibly inviting.

"Is it safe to swim?" we asked our guide.

"Yes it's very safe," he assured us. "Just wait about twenty minutes because I have a few things to do before I can watch you."

"Oh we're good swimmers we don't need to be watched!" we said. We're both pretty intrepid travelers not used to having a guide so, although we appreciated his gesture, being babysat was not a cool idea or necessary.

"No, no, please just wait and I'll be down as soon as I can," he insisted

OK, we thought, no need to rock the boat on arrival.


Twenty minutes later the guide accompanied us down to the river. We swam around in the murky water, stretching our bus-stiffened muscles for about half an hour while our new friend watched vigilantly from the dock. Afterwards, we went back to our rooms, showered and went to dinner.

We were served by an absolutely lovely Amer-Indian woman who asked us about our day.

"I hear you went swimming," she said with a sweet smile. "Did you meet Sankar?"

"Sankar?"

"Yes Sankar, he's our eight-foot caiman."

My dad nearly choked on his manioc.

"Um, no we didn't," I said nervously as my dad gulped water, his face turning red. "Uh, is he friendly?"

"Well I'm not sure really," our friend said in her sing-song voice. "I like to feed him scraps of meat."

And with that she went back to the kitchen.

From Paradise to Hell and Back Again: Les Isles du Salut, French Guiana

Back in the 18th century, colonists in French Guiana escaped the malaria and yellow fever of the mainland by heading to the idyllic Iles du Salut (Salvation Islands) about 20 km off the coast. But in the mid-1850s, these three tiny islands were turned into some of the most brutal prison camps that have ever existed; Alcatraz was a humane summer camp experience compared to "Devil's Island," immortalized by Papillion, the semi-fictional auto-biography of Henry Charriere that was later turned into a major film starring Steve McQueen.

The prison camps closed in 1953 and today the islands are once again one of French Guiana's favorite holiday spots - I researched the islands for Lonely Planet with my family in tow back in 2006. As lovely as the island are, the eerie, mostly-abandoned prison buildings weigh heavily on the atmosphere. Graveyards are filled with tombs of prison guards and their families - when prisoners died they were fed to the sharks. Walking through the cicada-filled jungles and along the rocky, grey-blue coastlines, you can't help but believe in ghosts. Every now and then you suddenly get goosebumps even though the heat is invariably sweltering. From stumbling upon an old isolation cell nearly swallowed by vines in the jungle to touring the group cells that were crammed with an inhumane amount of prisoners, it's hard to escape feelings of utter despair for how cruel humans can be. So many people died on these islands and none of them did it well.

Camping is available but we stayed at the only hotel, Auberge des Isles du Salut, set up in the old prison headquarters on Isle Royal, the main island. The welcome was snooty and verging on rude but the colonial plantation-style rooms with louvered
shutters and overhead fan is still one of my most favorite places I've ever stayed. Exquisite French meals (including one of the best fish soups I've ever had) were served on the veranda overlooking the sea. It was a pocket of period charm amidst the brutal history.

Getting to the islands was another treat. We came and left by catamaran sailboat and the trip back to the mainland is a sunset-cruise complete with rum punch.

On island we went fishing off the coast, my kids got very into chasing around agouti (a rodent that looks like a long-legged short-haired guinea pig), and we took a dip (you can't swim) at one of only two spots on the island where the currents are light enough that they won't take you away. Josh even went surfing on a little shark-infested break with some locals.

I'd go back. Despite the weirdness of these islands the Isles du Salut are one of the most interesting places I've ever been.

PS: The last photo isn't of the Auberge it's from an old decaying prison cell! The auberge was much, much nicer :-)

Frog Spotting in Suriname

Do you see him? I'll give you a hint he's slightly left of center and looks exactly like the jungle floor he's sitting on. I have no idea how I found this expertly camouflaged guy as I was tromping through Brownsberg Nature Reserve in Suriname. I do love frogs and always keep an eye out for them but I think this beauty represents my best eagle-eyed effort. The most specific name I could find for this critter is "leaf frog."

Brownsberg is about 100 km south of Suriname's capital city Paramaribo. I was only able to visit the preserve on a day trip but it was well-worth the drive with its endless deep-Amazon jungle walks and views over Brokopondo Reservoir. You can also stay over-night in the park in huts or dorms, which looked clean, comfortable and made me wish I could have stayed longer.

Photo of the Week: Kaietuer Falls, Guyana

I took this picture from the edge of Kiaetuer Falls - the drop from here is straight down 741 feet (250 meters). On average there are 30,000 gallons of water being shot over every second. Swifts nest in the fall's overhang and at sunset you can watch them dart in and out of the water; stretching away from the falls are swaths of virgin, misty and surreal Amazon Jungle. This is, by far, the most stunning waterfall I have ever seen anywhere, ever.

To get to the falls you have to either hike five days through untamed tropical forest (a dream trip of mine) or do what I did and fly in a chartered 5-seater airplane. I flew in with my father and a two-person documentary film team. The only reason I had the guts to go and stand on this ledge was that the documentary cameraman stood in the same spot and filmed the falls gushing for several minutes.

When my father saw him there he yelled to the other documentary partner, "That guy's got balls!"

To which she responded, "He's got three!"

Yet after the guy had been there awhile it looked pretty safe and not so scary so I slowly inched out to where he had been standing. The water was only up to my ankles and the current at the far side here wasn't strong. I held out my camera to the edge and *snap*.