Feature
Falling asleep in the silent black of the Essequibo night is one experience any tourist fortunate enough to visit Iwokrama's Field Station will not forget. You sleep so well you'll wonder what day it is when you wake up, let alone what the time might be. No dreams, no early morning Pentecostal, no sudden disturbances, no gun shots, no dogs, no arguments with the one you love.
Stop, who goes there? Fairview village is protected by bow-and-arrow weilding but harmless children.
The Iwokrama Field Station is peaceful, well kept and homely.
A spectacular view of the tropical sunset from the pontoon crossing at Kurukapari.
Well worth the climb: Just part of the incredible view from Turtle Mountain
Stabroek News
August 5, 2001
The thrill ride overland through thick jungle and saturated air is something else that won't fade. Eight hours strapped into a hot metal box, getting ripped around like a dummy tied to a mast, through four-foot deep swamps in the trail, over creeks and down skidding hills.
The driver walking his way through the worst of the lakes waist deep in muddy water, trying to save his shirt from the water and failing, and a prevailing air of competition guessing which is the best route to take. Characters leaping out of the vehicle to be the first to walk the channels, the anticipation rising as the jeep risks the suggested route through the unpredictable floods, chopping away fresh-fallen trees and listening to tales of getting stuck in the mud while huge Bedfords effortlessly plough their way through ever sinking roads.
On the brim of the wet season, the journey down to the station is so exhiliarating that it threatens to overshadow the whole visit.
We reached the pontoon crossing at Kurukupari in the late hours of the afternoon. The crossing itself was spectacular, low clouds carving the deep sunset over the fading trees, and camera flashes leaping out into the dusk as we tried to capture something of the feeling. We unloaded the jeep onto a small boat which ferried us to the station under this incredible sky.
The station has been hacked out of the jungle on the banks of the river. What remains is cut grass, no litter and an orderly number of traditional-style huts and dormitories under the gaze of an impressive, new training centre. Toucans and macaws soar overhead whilst water birds dive for fish just yards from the jetty in the high water.
But forget all the splendour of the environment - the thing that really hits you is the quiet. The place is so quiet. You know this is nowhere. There is no music, no 'entertainment,' no bar, just peace in the heart of the bush and thousands of moths flocking around electric light. Relaxing wouldn't do it justice. I got so relaxed I almost didn't come back.
Night was falling fast as we made our way to dinner in the hut at the far end of the station, darkness already stealing the few objects of civilisation from view.
"We didn't start with serious tourism until 1998," explained Colette McDermott, eco-tourism co-ordinator at the Iwokrama International Centre. "I came on in 2000 and spent most of last year streamlining and trying to improve the visitors' experience."
Standing on top of the small, but well-positioned, Turtle Mountain after a leisurely and informative one-hour 'nature trail' climb, visitors will be thankful that Iwokrama and McDermott took the eco-tourism plunge.
The small clearing atop of the mountain rewards climbers with an unpolluted view of miles and miles of forest canopy, the winding mighty Essequibo and blurring on the horizon, jagged silhouetted mountain ranges merging with the sky.
It's too much for the human eye. You might take panoramic photos and paste them together at home but they won't come close to standing on top of the jungle, breathing in close, wet air, watching predators dive and dance as if they knew they had an audience. You sit down on the rock and take a drink whilst your eyes try to gauge the scene. Of course, you don't want to leave. There is nothing there and nothing never felt so good.
It's the bomb of the stay, something that everyone asks you about when you get back to the Station. "How was the climb?" "What did you think of the view?" Everyone there has seen it but everyone wants to remember the first time. The shock of the expanse after the closeness of the trees on the hill climb, when it's all heads down or try and spot a monkey.
Just the boat ride to the base of the climb, jumping waves on the Essequibo, and then through overhanging vines and branches would be enough entertainment for families who spend their weeks behind desks and staring at screens or dealing with stressed customers. You watch jealously as the pilot effortlessly steers you through the currents. You want to drive. You don't want to just sit and ride. You look at your own life and feel that you don't do enough driving, that you are too much driven.
When the water is low, you can see turtles and caiman. When it's high, you start thinking there are anacondas below - but still you want to swim. These are the thoughts of the eco-tourist.
Iwokrama's venture into tourism was designed to generate income for the Centre to grease its path to self-sufficiency and to provide financial benefits to the local community. Consequently, most of the staff employed at the Station are hinterland people, learning the trades of rangership, managing hospitality and sharing traditional customs and ways with the visitors through trails and village visits.
The small village of Fairview provides tourists with a brief taste of some of the Amerindian life and conveniently sits a few minutes boat ride from the station.
For every tourist that Iwokrama brings to the village, the villagers receive a set fee. Of course, there is also opportunity for villagers to sell local crafts or garments to visitors as souvenirs but these opportunities are not being taken advantage of. The Station also has no gift shop.
Fairview itself is simple and calm, there's a general informality about the area that has fed into the Field Station and forms one of its great strengths.
The forest manager and Director-General are just as likely to be sat next to you at breakfast telling you their problems as is your wife. The community atmosphere is boosted by the friendliness of the rangers and staff. I figured they were just glad to see human faces.
More importantly, because the project is still a baby, the staff are genuinely interested in your opinion of it. Views are listened to and noted, McDermott's drive for improvement is not just limited to an office brainstorming session.
And there's more to come - the jewel in the Iwokrama tourism crown is being set as we speak - the canopy walkway. Proving popular in many eco-tourist resorts in Africa and South America, canopy walkways allow those who don't mind the height a unique view of the jungle ecosystem. The walkway is suspended above and through the canopy at heights of up to 100 feet, leaving nothing but air between you and the leaves. Walkways are meant to provide excellent birdwatching opportunities and that means attracting diehard birders from across the globe.
"The idea is that you walk on a trail to a certain elevation, say, to the lip of a valley or hill," McDermott enthused, "and then you walk out at the point so the ground drops from beneath and canopy comes up to meet you."
"It's a totally different experience of the forest," she said. "A high percentage of the wildlife lives in canopy." A percentage that can be easily missed when you're trying to concentrate your feet away from ants and snakes.
But it's not just Iwokrama's visitors who will benefit from the wonder bridge. It is meant to be shared for the general benefit of the community.
"We would like it to become a part of the tourism product of the north Rupununi," McDermott explained. "They will be able to bring people through - not just field station."
McDermott firmly belives that this "draw card facility" will attract a great deal of attention and visitors, citing similar and successful projects in Ghana and Peru.
The walkway is currently being constructed with the aid of engineers from Brazil and Ghana. Local individuals are being trained and are aiding the construction which should be completed by the end of the year.
"The team doing the construction takes a very strong focus on community training," McDermott said. "So in conjuction with the North Rupununi District Development Board, we identified four community members to learn about the construction and maintenance techniques."
Iwokrama's eco-tourism venture is both a tactile, learning business and a facilitator of opportunity and development for the local communities.
Indeed, eco-tourism has been aggressively cited by politicians, social commentators and businessmen alike as one piece in Guyana's development jigsaw.
Therefore, protecting what can benefit many different kinds of people in the local communities and beyond is clearly a major priority for the country. Otherwise, Guyana will have little to offer that isn't being done somewhere else. Iwokrama's ex-Director-General, David Cassells explained the problem,
"The rainforest is beautiful, the landscape is beautiful, but there's plenty of the same in Costa Rica."
"What's different here," he continued, "is that you can still see things like jaguars, giant otters and arapaima in the wild."
"But that's a pretty fragile thing," he warned. "If we look at the pattern of the use of the road near Mabura Hill, jaguar sightings are becoming rarer and rarer. Unless that's well managed, that could disappear over the next decade."
"That would be quite tragic for Guyana because then you would just have another litany of problems rather than an area of opportunity," he said.
"Eco-tourism by itself is not going to save the economy but I believe it's a fairly essential part of a structured diversification of the ecomony," he expanded. We've all heard the words 'diversification of the economy' many times before, but how can these grandiose words become action?
"That can only work if the public is really made aware and can see animals like the jaguar as living assets rather than short term trophies."
Most stakeholders in the tourism sector agree that another problem facing eco-tourism entrepreneurs is the condition of the country's main port of call, Georgetown. Tourists invariably have to spend some amount of time in the capital.
Cassells is convinced that a little bit of effort on the part of the citizens and Council would resurrect the Garden City from what he calls the Garbage City.
"It's not all negative," he said. "If you look at Camp Street where a group of businessmen and local residents built a promenade. That's an example to follow. When you go up Camp Street now you hardly ever see litter."
"So if there's an initial improvement people will start to mobilise themselves," he said. "If Georgetown was a clean, safe city, it would be an enormous asset to hinterland tourism, instead of being a hassle that you have to go through to get to there."
"It's got wonderful historic buildings, the streets could again become the Garden City. I think you could very easily imagine that people would want to stay two days rather than just one. That would have an immediate spin-off on peoples' lives."
"And for things like litter you don't need international aid programmes, you just need self-organisation. A few little things would make such a huge difference to the quality of life here," he concluded.
So although Guyana's eco-tourism resorts lie off in the wilds of nature, the hub of the nation's civilisation needs to be a clean and welcoming environment in order for the industry to thrive.
Whilst Iwokrama concentrates on proving to the world that sustainable development of tropical forests is possible and profitable - a project that, if successful, could trigger an economic revolution of Guyana's hinterland from limited resource to limitless resource - perhaps we should be taking the EPA's advice and holding onto those meal cartons instead of tossing them in the gutter.
According to Cassells, these small, but significant, changes of lifestyle would give our eco-entrepreneurs at least a fighting chance of enticing free-spending tourists away from the well-trodden paths of the Caribbean islands and Latin America's backpacking trails and into a very real and a very lucrative unknown.
In the meantime, those fortunate enough to experience Iwokrama's eco-adventure before the rush will all vow to return. The guest book is so full of praise that it gets boring after a couple of pages. Visitors from Europe, North America and beyond have all come and all left in awe - students, researchers, international donors and just plain old tourists alike.
What promises to become one of the continent's best eco-tourism experiences should be starting to make Guyanese proud.