CLAUDIA & CARSTEN'S WORLD EXPEDITION

Crossing the border

We walked across the border between Brazil and Guyana, from Bonfim to reach the town of Lethem.

We are in Guyana!

Lethem

Everybody follows the rules

Gekko in Lethem

Our flight to Kaieteur

We went to Guyana to visit Kaieteur National Park, which is not very easy to get to. The fastest way is to take these small planes.

Flying in Bollywood's plane

Our pilot was Guyanese of Indian descent. The other pilots called him "Bollywood". We were 5 people on the plane that day, including the pilot.

Kaieteur Falls

The landing strip

Administration of Kaieteur NP

Our home for 4 nights

Guesthouse

Guyana used to be a British colony, so this guesthouse was built in the '60s by the British Boy Scouts Association. It was a nice house and obviously had not had much maintenance since the '60s. When we arrived there were 2 guests who left after lunch and we had the house for ourselves for 4 nights.

Our room

As you can imagine, there were a lot of mosquitoes and bugs, so we had to be sure to sleep with very tight mosquito nets during the night.

Kaieteur Falls

This fall is 226 mt high.

Fall seen from Rainbow View

Falls seen from Boy Scout View

Gekko

This Gekko ate many of the cockroaches living in our kitchen....

Rainy day visitor

On our first night in the house it rained and we got most of the jungle coming inside the house to take shelter, including this "baby" tarantula, which according to our guide could grow to be as large as a grown man's hand and is "deadly poisonous"...they jump too, so lucky for Carsten that she didn't jump on him when he swept her into a bucket to take her out of the house....

Johnson's View

Potaro River

Mining town

This is the closest town to the park, about 20 minute walk from the park area. Let's just say we would not like to live there.

Golden Frog hiding in Bromeliad plant

Inhabitants

Johnson's View

Mantis

Trek to Tukeit

Tukeit is a 2 hour hike from the waterfall and it has a newer guesthouse where we could stay one night. Maxwell, our guide, was also an Arekuna Indian, born in Guyana. So, he spoke English instead of Spanish.

White witch moth

It was about 30 cm across.

Canoeing in Tukeit

Inhabitants of Tukeit

Carsten found this little snake while we were pushing the boat into the river. He showed it to Max and he said "please don't touch it, it can kill you".

The guesthouse in Tukeit

This one was in far better condition than the original guesthouse, however the kitchen was just as dirty as the other one. It was built on top of a big colony of wasps and they had their nests under the house, so you could hear constant buzzing from thousands of wasps all around and under the house. Not dangerous though if you didn't bother them.

Tukeit

Flying to Georgetown

The pilot on this flight was so nice he let Carsten sit at the front and he was kind enough to drive us in his own car to our hotel. He said Georgetown was too dangerous for tourists to walk around on their own.