My new found bike friend and I were last off the ferry but were waved through to the front of the queue at immigration to park our bikes. We had to go inside to do the immigration bit first and that’s where it happened. Finally. A woman wanted to see my yellow fever card.  I didn’t have a card but I had a copy of my Brazilian Yellow Fever Certificate on my phone. She took a long hard look at it and then let me pass. My friend was not so lucky. He searched his bag and couldn’t find his vaccine card. I suggested a photo of it on his phone might work and after some odd looks and more questions the lady let him through with the photo.

The bike import permit took a bit longer. I let the other guy go first as he was still in a hurry to get to the capital and meet the girl who he’d arranged to meet yesterday. Once he had his permit, they opened the gate and let him out but he had to go to another small police building first. I watched all this as I waited for my Temporary Import Permit (TIP). It took about 20 mins. It was nice having watched the other guy as I just followed his steps. He was still at the other police building, but left a few minutes after I arrived. And he was off like a rocket.

At the police post they wanted to see all my bike info and my International Drivers Licence. First time I’ve ever been asked for it. I knew this was going to be a problem. I hate international driver’s licences. They are issued in your home country by the local automobile association and are only valid for one year and cost 50 bucks. Basically they are just a small booklet written in several different languages that say you have a driver’s licence. You still have to show them your actual drivers licence anyway. My problem was that my International Drivers Licence had expired a couple of months ago because I had left Australia over a year ago. I had gone online and managed to get a new one, but it was sitting in my mail pile in Australia. My daughter had sent me a photo of it, but I wasn’t sure if that would work anyway. The cop was spending more time than I liked, looking at the expired licence.

He sort of spoke English but was confused about the expiry date on the licence. Just to annoy me even more, all the international licences are different, and the Aussie one only has an issue date and not any expiry date. It does say in the English that it is only valid for one year, but weirdly, it doesn’t say this in any other language except English. He questioned me about it, and I said/lied that they are valid for two years from the date of issue. This seemed to make him happy, so he put that date into the computer. And with a big smile, welcomed me to Guyana and wished me a safe trip.

And I was off. Welcome to Guyana. Formally British Guiana (until 1966) and therefore I had to remember to ride on the left hand side of the road again. It wasn’t as easy as you might think. Because I had learnt to ride in South America, it was natural for me to be on the right hand side on a motorbike. It would have been easier if I was in a car. In both Guyana and Suriname, most of the cars have the steering wheel on the right hand side like we do in Australia. The rest of South America it’s on the left hand side. Speaking of roads. One of the roads in Guyana had a BIG bearing on the timing of my whole South American trip. More than eighty percent of Guyana is covered in jungle and so there isn’t many roads. The road from the border to the capital, Georgetown was paved, but a lot of the road out of the country is not. There is a 470km section of unpaved road has a bad reputation, particularly in the wet. So I had tried to time my ride to pass that section in a small window of dry weather in April.

Considering it’s a dense jungle it attracts a lot of rain and the forecasts weren’t in my favour for the couple of weeks when the rains normally ease off. I want to go from Guyana into Venezuela but they have a territorial dispute about their adjoining border and so instead of continuing around the coastline or even in a straight line through the jungle, you have to head south about 550 kilometres and ride back into Brazil. Then you have to head north again and get into Venezuela through the Brazilian border. Quite inconvenient but at least it’s doable.  Maybe. But first I need to get to Georgetown. Just to add a bit of pressure, Brazil is bringing in a visa system for Australians (and the US and Canada). And it starts in a week. Every other time I went in and out of Brazil, I was able to get a free visa upon entry at the border. The new visa is about $80AUD and takes at least a week and being a new thing it’s got bugs and apparently isn’t easy to get. I’m going to take my chances and hopefully make it down the crappy road and get into Brazil before the change.

Guyana is the only English speaking country in South America. It’s not the Queens English. More of a Guyanese creole. There are less than a million people living there and 40 percent of them are Indian, 30 percent African and 10 percent indigenous. And they are on the Caribbean coast so that adds to their weird accents. Like the other Guianas, Guyana has a mixed history of Dutch and English occupation with a bit of Spanish and French complications. It was a British colony for 150 years before it became independent in 1966.

It was 186kms from the border town to the capital Georgetown. Very English sounding name. It took about 4 hours As I stopped off and checked out the local fishermen in a village and stopped at off at an English Pub for a pint and bangers and mash. Not really. Sadly. The road was okay, a few potholes and the usual speed humps. When I arrived I decided to check out a hostel called Rima Guesthouse, that the Canadian women that we had met on the ferry had recommended. It was okay and I was able to squeeze my bike down a narrow space between the house and the fence. It seemed safe because no one would get the bike out of there easily. Including me when I left. It was a nice old wooden building and about fifty bucks for a private room with shared bathroom and aircon. And I needed the aircon. The lady who ran the place was nice. There were a couple of people sitting around drinking a beer with her. One of them was and Aussie gold miner from Northwest Australia.

It was rare to meet another Aussie on my trip. I was glad the owners met me and had another version of what Australians are. The guy was in Guyana in search of gold and is one of the many of people over the past century who have come to Guyana looking to make their fortune. They are called Pork Knockers. Not sure exactly why but I read they would live in the jungle for months on end looking for gold and then arrive in town and knock on doors looking to feast on pork. I don’t think it was an endearing name. This guy, like another Aussie that I met in Paraguay was disillusioned with the Australian government and was looking for a better country to live in. He complained long and hard about the rip off Australian tax system and then later told me about and invited me to his goldmine in the Pilbara region of Australia where he finds lots of gold but only declares a small portion of it and then claims heaps of deductions and pays no tax. I just continued to drink the beer he kept handing me. He was a MAGA fan.

The Canadian woman who had recommended the place to me turned up. We went out for an overpriced and underwhelming dinner and then wandered around the seawall area in the evening. Not as exciting as it may sound. Lots of signs to promote the salvation of the people by following the Lord Jesus but in reality, the country is being saved by big mining and petroleum companies who are just starting to develop the vast riches the country has to offer. Cynical Shane thinks that a few local people and foreign companies will get extremely rich and corruption will be rife and the majority of the people who live there will be stuck in poverty, praying to Jesus for a better life. Like their forefathers.

Next day I wandered around town hoping to get an update on the road conditions down to Brazil. Finding stuff online was virtually impossible. And on the street wasn’t much better. And it was raining. The city has some lovely old wooden buildings and a vibrant and very local market area on the waterfront. The currency is the Guyanese dollar and was easy to get and all above board. I had another feed of fried chicken with noodles and veggies. It was not a traditional dish but was cheap and readily available.

I found an interesting little park with a statue of Chuffy. He was a slave who led a revolt of 5000 slaves against the Dutch in 1763. He was initially successful but then died of suicide while in prison. He is now the countries national hero.

I found an interesting old fashioned museum not far from the guesthouse. Free entry. Weird staff. But a few cool things. A huge bear looking creature that used to roam the jungles. Check out the size compared to the woman in the background and the doorway. I wasn’t supposed to photograph it? Then they had a copy of the world’s rarest and most expensive stamp. The one cent British Guyana Magenta stamp. It may have been worth one cent in 1863 but what is said to be the only remaining stamp of its kind, was sold, after a variety of owners around the world, for $12,000,000AUD in 2021. It’s etched in my mind and I’ll keep searching the world for one of them. There was also a moon rock. I can’t say I’ve seen one of those before. And a local timber chart. Nice wood.

One thing I didn’t see or hear anything about until I was reading up on Guyana was the Jonestown Massacre. Besides the 911 it was the largest single incident of American civilian deaths in Americas recent history. Reverend Jim Jones built up a cult of followers in the States and then moved to a property in Guyana for a better life for him and his followers. The short version is that in 1978 over 600 women and children and 300 men committed suicide by drinking a special poisoned drink. Many of them forced to do so. The expression “don’t drink the Kool Aid” comes from this massacre.

That’s why I only drink beer, coke, fresh juice and water. The next day I managed to remove my bike from the laneway and load it up. I had been worried about this next section of road for the past 10 months. The bad section is from Linden to Lethem and it was a two hour ride to get from the capital to Linden. I thought it would be wise to get to Linden early and stay the night and then have an early start and give myself two full days to ride the bad section.  I made it to Linden okay, the ride was nice and followed a big river and had a few spots where people would come from the city for a days outing and a swim and drink and food and loud music. You had to pay to get in and I wasn’t stripping off all my riding gear for a quick dip. But I did manage to find another feed of noodles and fried chicken.

Linden was an ugly mining type town and being a Sunday it took me a while to find somewhere to stay. I eventually found an apartment at a place called I-Ark Apartments in One Mile (only my Broome friends will understand the irony of that name). It seemed a dodgy place to walk so I rode my bike around to find some fuel, food and beer and get a few last minute supplies for the big trip.

The whole week was showing rain which made me more nervous but I had 3 full days to ride 450kms to get to Brazil before the new visa laws came into effect. It bucketed down rain all night.

KMS 41106