June 3, 2001

Hi Everyone!

It's another beautiful day in Guyana!  I'm really loving it here.

I'm writing to tell you about my first exploration trip into the interior.  We went for three weeks into the Kaburi river watershed to do a geological/geochemical reconnaissance.  I have learned quite a bit about geological mapping where exposures of rock are rare.  I also got plenty of excersize.

Anyway, the real story lies in being in the bush with AmerIndians.  These men were incredible - strong, smart, hard-working, really decent people.  And fast - they moved so fast through the jungle!  It was hard to keep up, and frankly, I couldn't.  On the first day, after 18 km of hiking, I was a half and hour behind.  But, at least always one man stayed with me (almost always).  It's real easy to get lost in the jungle - you can't see 20 meters ahead of you - sometimes much less than that.  So, to follow, you look for cut up small trees and plants (the AmerIndians walk with machetes and hack a trail through - they go out about 3 weeks before us to cut walking lines so that we can sample).  When you're in a hurry, though and you're not used to it, you can still easily make a wrong turn, loose the line, and then you're sunk.  One time, I was so unsure, I had to find a patch of sunlight (so my GPS would work) take a reading, plot my position and use the compass to stumble back to the line.  In any case, for a desert rat who had never had foot rot before, I did ok and at the end of it two AmerIndians called me courageous (more often though, they called me slow white girl - the Guyanese are very casual in what they call you - if your fat, they call you fat man, if your short, short lady - in the market I am always asked "short lady, whatcha shopping?" and when I ride around town, they shout out "white girl").  Once, someone had even placed flowers near my hammock.  I called them "bush lions".

I fell in love with the jungle though.  The moisture and the lack of sun made it difficult.  Clothes would never dry, and you usually hit the first swamp within a km of camp, and it rains harshly almost every day (thank god my GPS is waterproof).  So you are generally covered with mud up to your knees till you get to the first river to wash it off.  River crossings are, of course, on fallen logs.  Logs fall so often, you hear crashes through the night.  Then you wake up and head out, and there's a new obstacle on the line.  

In terms of wildlife, we saw a lot!  Jaguars (which the Guyanese call Tigers), snakes, parrots, mccaws, labbas (a mammal), tortoise (which we ate), hammarahs (a giant fish with teeth like a pirannah - we ate those too - the AmerIndians caught them with bow and arrow).  I saw so many birds including eagles and owls and giant blue butterflies, and some really big nasty insects.  The other woman geologist who sampled by boat (I was walking) also saw otters, anacondas and crocodiles (I didn't hear about that though till the last day because I basically didn't see her the whole time - which was good or I would have worried about it when I swam or bathed in the rivers).   One morning, I woke up with a parrot under my hammock.  A couple of AmerIndians chopped down a tree to catch two baby mccaws (they make some cash selling them) an another caught two jungle baby turkeys (poise).

I had trouble deciding which pictures to send you.  I took so many and there were so many beautiful things to see.  So I am sending a picture of the guy who took care of me at first when I was lagging behind.  He is weaving a Cassava squeezer.  Another picture is of my crew of line cutters and samplers at the bottom of an open pit mine, and there's a picture of them sampling a blackwater creek (black water is common here due to high organic content) in the jungle (which is mostly how the trip was - so DARK!).  And another is of two guys sitting on a bench they built at one of our fly camps (fly camps are more temporary camps when we are on the move - as opposed to the big base camp - when you get to where you are gonna camp all the guys get to work chopping down trees to build frames for tarps and poles for tying up your hammock, tables for the cook - heck at one spot, they were just falling trees to let some sun in so we could dry clothes).  There really is no environmental concience out there in the interior -or anywhere in Guyana really.  This country is the size of England with only 700,000 people in it and 90% of the people live on the coast - there just isn't many people out in the bush.  White people are rare.  Our base camp was near a village and when I bathed there, I usually had an audience of villagers and children (don't think they ever saw a woman shave her legs or use a sonic toothbrush).

Anyway - enough for now, I don't want to bore you with a long letter.  Hope you are all doing well.  I am healthy as can be, riding my bike everywhere, walking, losing weight, building muscle, eating well and of course, having a spot of rum once in awhile.  I'm so happy that I decided to do this - it is a great adventure!

Take care,

Erin