Guyana Discovery Guide

Guyana is where the Caribbean meets the Amazon and speaks English. It is a country the size of Britain with fewer than 900,000 people, nine-tenths of them on a strip of coast below sea level. Behind them is the second-highest forest cover on earth: more than 225 mammals, 900 birds and 6,500 plants, the world's largest scaled freshwater fish, its largest otter and its largest anteater. One waterfall drops 226 metres in a single fall, with the flow of four and a half Niagaras. It is also a society that Trinidad and India and Africa and the Makushi all made.

The main travel issue

Both advisories say crime in Georgetown is significant and the police thin, Canada asks for a high degree of caution, the roads are dangerous, and the interior is reached by light aircraft and laterite.

The solution

Go with a company that knows the interior, and give it ten days. The reward is Kaieteur from the lip with nobody else there, a canopy walkway 33 metres up at Iwokrama, and a Rupununi ranch at dawn.

If you travel slowly

Base in Georgetown's garden-city streets for the cathedral, Stabroek Market, the seawall, the Botanical Gardens and the museums, then go inland by the Lethem road: Iwokrama River Lodge on the Essequibo for three nights and the canopy walkway, Surama's Makushi-run eco-lodge, then the North Rupununi -- Karanambu for the giant otters, Caiman House for the black caiman -- and out through Lethem. Kaieteur is a day by air from the capital or a detour from Mahdia.

If you want to see the essentials

Kaieteur Falls, 226 metres of single drop seen from the plateau's edge; Georgetown's timber St George's Cathedral of 1892 and the iron Stabroek Market; the Iwokrama forest and its walkway; the Rupununi savanna; and, in season, the leatherbacks of Shell Beach.

If you seek local character

Mashramani on 23 February for the republic, Phagwah in the Hindu villages, Emancipation and Arrival Day in their months, pepperpot at Christmas, roti and curry any day, cricket at Providence Stadium, and calypso, chutney and soca on the minibus radio.

If you want to go beyond the obvious

Orinduik Falls, 25 metres high and 150 wide on the Ireng at the Brazilian border; Bartica, the gateway to the interior at the meeting of three rivers; the Kanuku Mountains, 6,110 square kilometres protected since 2011; the Kanashen conservation area of the Wai Wai in the far south, the world's largest community-owned; and Lethem, where a bridge crosses the Takutu into Brazil.

Guyana is a Caribbean country that happens to be on the South American mainland: English-speaking, cricket-playing, the seat of the Caribbean Community, and made by the same plantation history as the islands. The Dutch built the polders and the kokers that still drain the coast; the British took over in 1796 and united Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice as British Guiana in 1831; the enslaved rose in Berbice in 1763 and in Demerara in 1823, when 9,000 to 12,000 people demanded full emancipation and were crushed; and after 1838 the planters brought indentured workers, mainly from India, whose descendants are about 40 per cent of the population today, beside Afro-Guyanese, nine Amerindian nations at about a tenth, and Chinese and Portuguese minorities. Religion follows: 64 per cent Christian, 25 Hindu, 7 Muslim in 2012.

The politics ran on those lines. Cheddi Jagan's People's Progressive Party won the first election under the 1953 constitution and was suspended after 133 days; Forbes Burnham's People's National Congress ruled from 1964 to his death in 1985, authoritarian and socialist, and the Jonestown deaths of 1978 brought the world's eyes; the first free election since 1964 came on 5 October 1992 under Jimmy Carter's observation, and the parties still divide the country by what Guyanese Hindustani calls aapan jaat, one's own kind. Oil since 2019 has made it the fastest-growing economy on earth while, the World Bank says, abject poverty persists.

The temper is warm, loud and talkative, the food the best evidence of the mix, and the interior another country -- Makushi, Wapishana and Wai Wai land reached by airstrip and river.

Guyana's forest is its case to the world: the second-highest forest cover of any country, a Norway partnership since 2009 to keep it standing, the Iwokrama forest of 3,716 square kilometres run for research and sustainable use, the Kanashen area of the Wai Wai as the largest community-owned conservation area on earth, and the Kanuku Mountains protected since 2011. The Iwokrama River Lodge charges a mandatory US$15 conservation user fee for every visit that funds community projects, and its canopy walkway and Surama's eco-lodge are jointly or wholly run by the Makushi, who draw about 60 per cent of the village's income from tourism. The threats are named in the encyclopaedia: illegal mining, which put two dozen Chenapau villagers under arrest inside Kaieteur National Park in 2017, and a rate of forest loss that more than doubled between the 1990s and the 2000s.

The rules of the ground are the advisories': never trek alone, hire an experienced guide from a reputable company, carry insurance that includes helicopter rescue, use registered boats with life jackets and never after dark. Exotic birds may not be exported, the Canadian advisory says, without a year's residence and the ministry's permission. Kaieteur's golden rocket frog lives its whole life in one bromeliad species on the plateau: step where the guide steps.

Spend where it stays: the Makushi lodges, the Rupununi ranches, the Amerindian guides, and Georgetown's markets rather than the malls.

January–February -- the second rainy season ends in mid-January; Mashramani on 23 February for Republic Day, the year's biggest street festival.

March–April -- the drier interval: the Rupununi savanna at its most travellable, Phagwah in the Hindu villages, Easter on the coast.

May–June -- the main rainy season from May to mid-August, when the Rupununi floods and shares its waters with the Amazon; the UK advisory's flooding months on the coast.

July–August -- still wet inland but the falls at their fullest; Emancipation Day on 1 August; the rains ease from mid-August.

September–October -- the driest period on the coast, September to November by Georgetown's account, and the best months for the interior roads and the Iwokrama walkway.

November–December -- Diwali; the second rains from mid-November; pepperpot for Christmas.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Year-round relative cost index vs country average

Higher — Georgetown's international hotels in the oil boom, Kaieteur flights, and Mashramani week

Average — the Rupununi lodges and ranches, Iwokrama

Lower — the coast towns, Linden and New Amsterdam, and the May-to-August rains

The Iwokrama prices are the lodge's own, quoted in US dollars and subject to change; airport taxi fares, park fees and Kaieteur tour prices are not stated because no readable authority page prints them, and the relative bands are editorial judgment.