130 miles north of Boa Vista (“beautiful view”) the capital of Roraima State lies Venezuela, closed to tourists with US passports. However we have found many Venezuelan refugees earning a living in Boa Vista so more people than we would have imagined speak Spanish here. 
We spent some time Monday route planning in the comfort of our air conditioned room and came to a few conclusions. 
I’m flying from the capital of Suriname (formerly Dutch Guyana) to Amsterdam on October 14th to visit my sisters so we need to arrive in Paramaribo in the first week of October. The plan is for Layne and Rusty to spend two weeks at the marina and campground in a suburb of the capital while I am in Italy and Scotland so as we back tracked from that date we saw no reason to hurry away from our rather sumptuous $45 a night swimming pool. 
The fact is life in the Guyanas is quite expensive and we are anticipating some hardship in a land of yes, three dollar gas, but $100 a night basic air conditioned accommodation. So we figured let’s spend time here being decadent so we ordered a steak dinner in our room last night. The dining room where we get the included breakfast is lovely but not refrigerated: 
Anyway we had to justify this life do we left Rusty in the room poor boy and tackled some jobs in town. First of all how to enter Guyana which is not tourist friendly by all accounts and border protocols are rather old fashioned. Apparently they love photocopies according rather dated overlander accounts so we found a copy shop and prepared a wad of paper copies of passports, vehicle documents, driver licenses and so forth. Including making proper booklets my rather cheesy internet purchased international driving permit said to be a requirement for foreigners driving in Guyana. I told you they are weirdly old fashioned. The copy guy did a brilliant job in his fully equipped shop:
I mean, doesn’t this look irreproachably official? A five year permit off the Internet for $20:
We used google translate and he was efficient and helpful including printing out a perfect copy of our Guyanese car insurance.
All we have to do now is get Rusty his health certificate and we will be ready to cross. Apparently he needs an exit permit to leave Guyana so if he doesn’t officially enter that can be a problem to obtain from the Ministry of Agriculture in Georgetown. Another absurd requirement treating Rusty like he is an export commodity. 
This guy overheard our plans and said he had a tip for us. Buy chocolate he said. Guyanese officials love chocolate bars and he hands them out like wedding favors when he drives to the border town of Lethem. We will take his advice of course as there are many police checkpoints on the roads in Guyana.
Next stop was the supermarket for a few staples but shopping is always a cultural experience. This place was close by the copy shop and it was one of the best supermarkets we’ve seen in northern Brazil, oddly enough.
Most of the supermarket is pretty normal with quite a few familiar processed food brands but the meat department was extensive and pretty impressive. Then there are mysterious packages of I don’t know what:
We stuck to apples pears mandarins and bananas. No idea what this gluten free product might be for two dollars:
A passerby heard us puzzling out loud and introduced himself in fluent English. He had spent thirty months studying in Canada and didn’t get to practice his English much he said. These peppers are odd as we haven’t seen any spicy food in Brazil more’s the pity.
Then I couldn’t get the cart past the check out. Much laughter because they are designed not to fit. Thats because the bagger loads your bags into a special cart and walks them to your car. Cultural differences you encounter when traveling.
A van tour, sticker and a two dollar tip made his day:
And so back to our swimming pool exhausted by a few hours in town.
1 comment:
That’s…a lotta meat.
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