Tim and I were wildly excited about visiting our friends, and fellow PCVs, Paul and Alyssa, in their remote site called Monkey Mountain. We had planned for months to visit this week. The plan was to take a mini bus down the road for 6 hours into Mahdia, where there is an airstrip that flies into MM. We knew we could fly into MM from G/town too, but the plane tickets were much cheaper leaving from Mahdia and we didn’t mind the long bus ride to save a little cash. So, we loaded up on Christmas gifts for our friends, things they can’t get in their site (eggs, bread, cheese, wine, a warm blanket and some of our favorite books) and hit the road.
On the bus ride down on Tuesday, Tim and I talked about how excited we were to get out of our urban site and see the more rugged side of Guyana. Paul and Alyssa told us about many hike we would take together to visit waterfalls and other beautiful vistas in their small, Amerindian village. We were so excited to visit with our friends, who we rarely get to see outside of Peace Corps conferences, due to their remoteness.
Arriving in Mahdia felt like entering the wild West. It is a small mining town and I imagine the, ‘get rich quick and to hell with the consequences of my actions’ attitude that seemed pervasive in the community is similar to what the California gold rush must have been like. At least we were greeted by another PCV, who has spent almost two years living in this outpost town. She greeted us with wonderful hospitality and let us spend the night before our scheduled flight the next day.
Wednesday is when all the best laid plans turned upside down on us! Although we arrived at the airstrip in time with money in hand to pay for our flight, the airline had packed the tiny prop plane full of goods and left no seats for paying the passengers, us! So off flew the plane to Monkey Mountain, packed with beer, rum and mattresses for the villagers for Christmas, and Tim and I stayed flustered on the ground. We spent the next 6 hours on the airstrip, trying to finagle with pilots, airstrip coordinators, airlines in G/town via phone and Peace Corps in the hopes that we could somehow get another flight and make it to MM that day. I won’t go into all the sad details but, needless to say, nothing worked.
We were told that there was a flight going out on Friday though, could we wait in Mahdia until then? Tim and I were discouraged at first. Would the 2 pounds of green beans, tomatoes, carrots, cucumber and cheese we had brought for our friends last until then?Could we extend our trip and make it back in time for Christmas? Or should we chalk it up to a loss and head back to Linden? Well, after an encouraging work from Paul and Alyssa, we decided to stick it out. After all, we had come this far, why turn back now. And, as Paul said, “When Guyana gives you lemons, turn them into pears!” (Not quite sure what he meant by that but it cheered us up and we held out hope that the next day, Thursday, we could book a plane ticket leaving Friday and still enjoy our mini vacation with our friends.
However, when we went to pay for our tickets on Thursday the airline representative in Mahdia told us that there isn’t any flight leaving for Monkey Mountain until Monday! What!?! I thought for a minute he was kidding. But, no, that was the truth. Unless we wanted to wait until Monday, stuck in Mahida, sleeping on Ryan’s extra mattress on the floor, and rapidly running out of money so we wouldn’t even be able to buy food over the weekend, we didn’t have a choice but to head back to Linden.
So, this morning we woke up at 3:30 am and crammed back into a minibus, bumped over the unpaved roads back home, feeling like we had failed. Well, we try not to think about this adventure as a failure. More like a mission UN-accomplished. We tried to fly out of a remote town, to visit our friends in an even more remote town, during Christmas time, and things didn’t work out.
Can we glean any lessons out of this debauched travel attempt? I think so. In Guyana, it is not advisable to try to fly out of small, rural airstrips unless you have to. If you have an option, book a ticket through Georgetown and pay for it in advance. That way you will be guaranteed to get on the plane before they pack it full of stuff instead of people. We can also apply this lesson to travel in general, when you are trying to get to an off-the-beaten track location, plan on getting there from a busy transportation hub. Even if it seems like you are saving time and money by taking the road less traveled, the road less traveled often leaves you stranded. Also, walk with more money than you think you need, just in case.
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| The Sock Monkeys getting ready to go to Monkey Mountain. Their first outing in Guyana! |
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| Waiting for the bus outside Linden |
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| At a rest stop, I make a friend! Yay monkey! |
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| Waiting to cross the river by ferry, almost to Mahdia |
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| On the ferry, almost there |
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| Rain on the E'bo river |
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| Trying to get on the plane |
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| This is as far as the Sock Monkeys (and Tim and I) got to Monkey Mountain. The darn air strip in Mahdia... |
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