Lethem Rodeo Roadtrip: Part One

This past Easter weekend was, without a doubt, one of the most memorable of my almost 25 years. It was one of those weekends that 10, 20, 30 years from now I will look back on as one of the best times of my Peace Corps experience. This past weekend, from Thursday night until Monday night, myself and 10 other volunteers traveled to the village of Lethem, Guyana for their annual Rodeo celebration that is held every year on Easter weekend. It was nothing short of a crazy adventure.

It started at 8pm on Thursday night in Georgetown, where we met up with some other travelers at a Shell gas station to load onto the bus. Our bus sat 24 people in rows of four and the trip down to Lethem can take anywhere from 15 to 20 hours depending on the quality of the road. For the majority of the trip, probably about 90% of it, the road is unpaved, just packed dirt that is full of potholes, ditches, and, when it rains, turns into a nice thick mud. Needless to say, we received many warnings about the trip down, with everyone telling us it would be an experience we would never forget. But as we loaded onto the bus, we were all way to excited about the upcoming weekend to be nervous about the ride. I ended up sitting in the far back row of the bus in front of the suitcases (which kept pushing into me the whole ride, giving me some nice bruises up and down my spine), in the foldout seat in the aisle. This was ok with me for 2 reasons: 1. Everyone knows that back of the bus is the most fun and 2. I can never really sleep in moving vehicles anyways.

We started out on our journey, traveling from Georgetown to Linden, about an hour and a half away on the last paved road we would see for days. After Linden, we turned off onto the 1st section of the dirt road, which was very wide, enough for at least 3 vehicles to drive side by side, and had dense forest lining it on both sides. There were a lot of potholes and ditches and the bus was purposefully swerving all over the road to avoid them, while barreling down at 80 kilometers per hour. The full moon was so bright that, even though the only lights we had were the headlights of the bus, you could see everything so clearly. We were on this road until the tiny village of Maruba, where we stopped a a small rest area to use the bathrooms. You know you are in the Peace Corps when you stop to use the restroom and then can't stop talking about how nice the bathrooms were. These had an actual toilet and paper, which is the height of bathroom sophistication in Guyana. We were all very excited about those bathrooms. About 45 minutes later was the Maruba police checkpoint. I have no idea why this existed. True, this was the last point of civilization until the Essequibo River, which was about 6 hours away, but it wasn't like we were crossing international borders or anything. I decided that the reason for this checkpoint was because, if they didn't stop every vehicle on the road, the tiny Maruba police outpost would have absolutely nothing else to do.

After Maruba, the road changed drastically. It became more mud than dirt and it narrowed, so that only one vehicle could fit through at a time. The forest grew denser, thicker, and darker. It seemed to overtake the whole road and it went so high that it curved over top of the road and blocked the moon. Except for the bus headlight, it was literally pitch black. I don't think I've ever seen anything look that black or that dark, with no light from the stars or the moon. At this point it was around 12 or 1 am and, except for the driver, I was the only one awake, thanks to my inability to sleep while moving and the suitcases banging against my spine. So I sat there, bouncing around as we swerved and skidded in the mud, still trying to do 80 km per hour, thinking every thouht that is humanly possible. Some of them I thought twice. Around 4am the bus, attempting to get up a rather steep and muddy hill, got stuck for the 1st time. It tried a few times and keep sliding backwards.Finally the driver stopped and told everyone to get out and walk so that he could try to get up without all the weight. So we emptied the bus and, at 4am punch drunk on lack of adequate sleep, began walking. It was pitch black and we couldn't see anything. Not one thing. We were slipping and sliding on the mud, trying not to think about what lived in the dark forest that surrounded us. We went up the hill, rounded a corner, and waited for the bus to pick us up.

Around 8 am, still about an hour from the next sign of civilization, we hit a particularly muddy part of the road. As the bus was trying hard to get through the muck, we suddenly felt it lurch forward and then slide out of control. The next thing we know the bus is abruptly tilting to the left and we are sinking into the mud. The mud reached all the way up the windows. We all managed to climb out the drivers door up front and then stood in the mud as we watched a pickup truck that thankfully happened along pull our bus out of the mud and back onto the road.

An hour later, now half covered in mud, we reached the Essequibo river here which we crossed on a ferry. After the ferry is the Iwokrama Rainforest reserve park, which is a national reserve that is protected by the Guyanese government. The road through there is about 4 or 5 hours long so we stopped for a bathroom break at the gate. The only bathrooms there were some thoroughly used outhouses and I was the only one willing to use them without question. I'm sure it has something to do with using the outhouse at the lake house growing up, so I'd like to thank Gramps for helping me prepare for my Peace Corps experience :) Iwokrama was absolutely beautiful, just mile after mile of untouched rainforest. We made it through Iwokrama in about 4 and a half hours and as soon as we left it, the landscape changed again dramatically. The rainforest was replaced by endless open savannas, dotted with trees, and surrounded by lush green mountains. This was definitely my favorite part of the trip.

We made one more stop for a late lunch at an eco lodge resort about an hour outside of Iwokrama around 3pm. We continued on our journey towards Lethem, through the open fields and across dozens of small creeks on some less than trustworthy wooden bridges. Finally, at around 6 pm on Friday, 20 hours after we left Georgetown, we reached the village of Lethem on the Brazil-Guyana border. We were dirty and tired and sore but we made it in one piece and we were all more than ready for the weekend to begin.