First, you get up at 4:30am to bathe, fix breakfast and wait (hopefully) for Robbie or Trevor to come through the village picking up passengers. You ask, "What if they don't come?"...oh, you do the same thing the next day and hope they will come to pick up passengers. We were lucky, Robbie came through around 7am...usually he arrives around 6am.
Then you head down the the dusty, bumpy Linden-Lethem Road (the ONLY road that connect s the north and south ends of the country). Along the way we are treated to some of the most extraordinary scenery on the planet...open savannas extending to the horizon rimmed by mountains that run from the coast of Guyana deep into the heartland of Brazil. And occasionally we are treated to something a bit unusual....like a 4x4 that has just rolled over.
Now, remember I said this is not the US...because if it were, this scene would be covered with police and emergency vehicles...what did we find?...the two passengers who had survived the rollover. The driver? Nobody was sure. He had flagged down a vehicle was "going for help"...absolutely no concern about "leaving the scene of a accident".So what did we do? Well, first, check the dip stick to be sure there is still oil in the engine...then fire it up. OK, the engine runs....oh, got some body parts that are rubbing against the tires?...just pull them out until there is clearance for the tires to turn....ah, that windshield is really beat up....ok, Dylan, you get in and kick it out. So out comes the smashed windshield.
Dylan got into the vehicle, fired up the engine and drove it onto the road. Now, what is going to happen...wellllll, the driver was last seen going north, but the closest town is Lethem, an hour or so south. You're not going to believe this...one of the passengers got behind the wheel and headed for Lethem...with NO windshield. He made it to Lethem about 4 hours later...we saw him.
Remember when yo went to Wal-Mart to buy your stove and you used your credit card??? Ain't no such thing as a credit card in Lethem...cash is King. Getting cash into the country is something of a goat roping. I typically wire money to myself...which in of itself is somewhat problematic. You see, if the Western Union agent is not open, I can't get my money....nooooo, there are no phones, so I can't call before I leave Kwatamang and travel two hours to see whether or not the agent is open...today it isn't.
In the meantime, we have gone to the store (not Wal-Mart, but similar...almost as many items from China) and negotiated for the stove...but we have no money...what to do? We'll stay overnight and see if it opens on Saturday...it didn't. So we travel back to Kwatamang...we spent $40 for transportation, $35 for a hotel and $40-$50 for meals...no stove.
So, the following week, we make the same journey...joy of joys, the Western Union agent is open...we collect our money, go to the store, retrieve our new stove, buy some goods, go to Debbie's Snackette, eat ice cream...then we load the new stove and head back to Kwatamang.
In the picture, you can see Clare with her new stove on the top of Robbie's mini-bus. Before it leaves Lethem for Kwatamang, the bus will have, in addition to the stove, several propane bottles, a couple hundred pounds of ice, 150 pounds of horse feed, God only knows how many cases of soda, provisions and 10 people....nothing moves in the Rupununi unless it is filled to the maximum.
Now we head for home...with stops along the way, we arrive in Kwatamang around 7pm....so, after two trips to Lethem our new stove sits proudly in our cabin where it has been baking bread, biscuits, cinnamon rolls and cakes at an astonishing rate.
