Drinking Rum Punch in the Rupununi

[SafariChick]

Terrific report, @@inyathi ! I have just returned yesterday afternoon from Costa Rica (yes @@Game Warden I will begin my report soon - photos uploading as I read this one!) and it is interesting some of the similarities. I will try to point them out when I do my report. Jealous of the Giant Anteater!

[Atravelynn]

You know what I keep thinking about from this report? Those Scarlet Ibis.

[TonyQ]

@@inyathi

Thank you for a fascinating report. You certainly saw a wide range of birds - the scarlet ibis was spectaclular.

I am pleased you saw the anteater - they are amazing animals.

 

(I have mae a note of the tick twisters!)

Edited April 15, 2014 by TonyQ

[Zim Girl]

@@inyathi

 

Wonderful report, full of really good info. You have answered most of my questions in your closing paragraphs without me asking so thank you.

Just one thing, as you say, Brazil is the obvious place to go to see South American mammals, but if you wanted a similar experience but without the high tourist numbers would Guyana be the place to go? What were tourist no's like in the lodges you stayed in?

After reading this Guyana remains high on my list of places to go!

[inyathi]

@@Zim Girl

 

We really only met a handful of other tourists during our trip, there was no one else staying at either Rock View or Karanambu when we were there, but there was a couple staying at Iwokrama River Lodge, who were also at Rewa and a young backpacking couple staying at Surama. Otherwise the most tourists we met, were at Atta Lodge because another birding group was staying there, also some non birding/wildlife people just drop into Atta for lunch, go for a quick walk around the canopy walkway and then continue on to either Surama or Iwokrama Lodges, for the night depending which way they’re headed. Even if there are other tourists staying at Atta, everything is arranged so that you go up to the canopy walkway, at different times, only one group is allowed on at a time.

 

I said to Rovin and the other guys at Rewa, that I would try and help send them some more tourists, this is one of the reasons I wrote this report. When I said the same to Salvador at Karanambu, he said that actually they have enough tourists thanks and that they are always busy in fact, they are in the process of building a couple of extra rooms. Thanks to Diane and her otters and also the anteaters, Karanambu is the most well known lodge in Guyana. All of the lodges are small, I wouldn’t think any of them at present, would accommodate more than a dozen people at most. I think there were just six rooms at Karanambu and when the building work has finished there will be eight which would obviously mean accommodation for sixteen, but they won't expand beyond that. When you're out and about on activities you won't encounter tourists from anywhere else.

 

So if you don't really want to see many other tourists and want a great wildlife/wilderness experience, then Guyana is definitely a great place to go.

 

One of the great things is that all the lodges are quite close together, close enough that you don’t actually have to visit them in a set order, so if one lodge is booked up on the nights you had in mind, you can probably rearrange you’re itinerary, to fit it in elsewhere.

Edited September 18, 2020 by inyathi

[inyathi]

Earlier today I just happened to be viewing my Guyana album on Flickr that contains all of the photos linked to in this report; I was looking at a panorama near the top of one page thinking why on earth did I upload such a horribly dark image? It was so dark you really couldn’t really see the view properly at all and to compound the problem I reduced the dimensions of all my Guyana panoramas far too much so they’re all really much too small. Then as I scrolled down the page I saw another similar horribly dark panorama near the bottom, so similar in fact that I realised it was actually the same one. Evidently when I uploaded the photos two years ago I uploaded the same shot twice somehow failing to notice this. As I like my photos to be in order I decided I should replace the first one with a much larger and brighter version and then delete the second one. I knew when I did this that replacing a photo on Flickr changes the URL so the panorama would disappear from this report. Not once but twice, it turns out that I'd not only uploaded the photo twice but I then linked to both copies in this report because obviously I thought they were two different panos and so included both, very silly.

 

So here is the new better version of the panorama that is now missing from post 75 (and 83 where it didn't belong).

The Rupununi Savannah a little like the Serengeti but without the wildebeest

 

Click on it and you will see the large version, I regret that unfortunately I can’t really replace any of the other Guyana panoramas I have on Flickr with bigger versions as that would completely mess up this report, otherwise I would do.

 

Also I always try to make sure that whatever I write in my reports or anything I post is accurate but inevitably like everyone I make mistakes, while geotagging some of my photos on Flickr with the aid of Google Earth I discovered that the aerial photo in post 85 that I labelled Ogle Airport is not, it is Cheddi Jagan International Airport. Considering that the Ogle is right on the edge of Georgetown and Cheddi Jagan is 25 miles south of the capital it should have been quite obvious to me that I’d got them mixed them up, not perhaps the worst mistake to make. I wouldn’t have mentioned this at all if I hadn’t decided I needed to replace the missing panorama but I thought I would just because it annoys me a tiny bit.

 

Although not quite as much as seeing the message this photo is no longer available, normally I try not to replace or edit any photos on Flickr that I know I’ve linked to in reports here so that doesn’t happen but in this case the image was so dark it really had to go. When I came to do the next report after this my first one on Zakouma I realised I needed to upload decent sized versions of my panoramas so now I make sure that all my panos are nice and big.

[Photo-Kiboko]

Inyathi,

one Karanmbu rum punch on your travel report!

 

I have enjoyed your report.

Many locations look unchanged, compared to my trip in 2012.

You can be very lucky with all the animal and bird sightings.

You had chosen the better season.

 

Best regards

Bernd