Saving, and Splurging, in Guyana

Views of and near Kaieteur Falls in Guyana. Credit Seth Kugel for The New York Times.

Where I come from, we don’t put ice in our Guinness. Or Red Bull. But in the gold-mining frontier town of Bartica, Guyana, I became a (temporary) convert.

Ice-cold beer makes sense in the steamy jungle town, and a little extra alertness can’t hurt in an area where it seems as if half the population is armed.

That revelation was just one of many surprises I found in Guyana, the offbeat first stop on my offbeat route to the World Cup in Brazil. That trip would take me through Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana, en route to Natal, Brazil. It began with the cheapest one-way ticket I could find to South America, a $334 direct flight from New York to Georgetown, the Guyanese capital. Formerly British Guiana, the country of about 725,000 has a complicated colonial legacy and a largely poor population descended from indigenous peoples, African slaves and Indian laborers.

I ended up in Bartica at the suggestion of a woman at a tour operator when I balked at the high price tags of her company’s excursions. Walking around the nearly dead town after sundown on a Sunday was entirely my doing.

A view of Kaieteur Falls from a plane. Credit Seth Kugel for The New York Times

I did, though, find a group of local characters outside the Best Buy Meat Center. They included Eon Ferrier, who runs Five Star Mineral Trading, a company that buys “sponge gold” unearthed by miners and melts it into bars for export. Another was Troy Harper, a Bartica native who said he lived mostly in Brooklyn, which seemed unlikely until I told him my name and he responded, “You Jewish?” Each carried a sidearm; each told me not to worry — it was because of the precious metal and wads of cash that moved around town, as well as remaining jitters after a massacre in 2008.

There was also a 19-year-old aspiring rapper who goes by the moniker Kid King, and Futu, the owner of the market. We chatted and munched chewy chunks of wild boar they ordered from a place next door called Ease the Stress Hang Out Bar. Kid King rapped a bit.

I had come to Bartica because, as any traveler who has visited Guyana (and not many have) will tell you, you’ve got to get out of Georgetown. And Bartica is one way to access the country’s main attractions: the rivers, savannas and rain forests of its largely unpeopled (but heavily frogged) interior.

Not that Georgetown didn’t have its moments. In hectic Stabroek Market, you can buy petroleum jelly by the pound (for hairstyling purposes) and homemade mauby, a pan-Caribbean drink made by boiling bark, by the glass. There were also sporadic flashes of beauty, including whitewashed colonial buildings and the blazing-orange blooms of the flamboyant trees that lined many downtown blocks. But other streets were vacant or decrepit, and the water in the canals that run alongside them was littered with plastic bottles.

So I headed for the interior, which requires either money for small planes or time for slow and bumpy roads. I decided on two compromise splurges: a boat tour from Bartica and a flight to Kaieteur Falls, the country’s most celebrated destination.

The trip to Bartica was cheap enough: a one-hour bus ride from Georgetown (500 Guyanese dollars, or about $2.60 at 193 Guyanese dollars to the U.S. dollar) and a one-hour commuter speedboat trip (2,500 dollars) down the cafÉ con leche-colored Essequibo. My stay was equally frugal. An old, dated room at the New Modern Hotel was only 7,000 dollars. The cook-up rice (a Guyana staple, made with coconut milk and, in this case, greens) at the Upper Level was cheap, moist and filling.

Heading into the jungle on a boat trip from Bartica.  Credit Seth Kugel for The New York Times

Short of returning to Georgetown and waiting for a day trip to join, there was no way around paying more than I’m used to for the boat tour and trip to the falls. My boating guide was Bhagwandas Balkarran, who first came to the region in the 1970s as a guard at Mazaruni Prison down the river. He now takes visitors beyond his former workplace to the remains of an old Dutch fort, past gold mines and deep into the jungle for a dip in the squat but powerful Marshall Falls. He said he gave me about a 40 percent discount of what he would charge a group, bringing the price down to a still-not-very-frugal 35,000 dollars. Later, I’d pay 29,000 dollars for a seat on a small Cessna Caravan to Kaieteur Falls.

I agreed to those prices in part because everything else was dirt-cheap; after four days and four nights I had spent just $578.50, including those excursions. The Rima Guest House in Georgetown proved a deal at 6,000 dollars a night for a worn-in but cozy bedroom with shared bath. It felt like a boardinghouse from another era; I couldn’t shake the feeling that a telegram might arrive for me at any moment.

It is also centrally located, close to several bargain Guyanese restaurants. Guyanese cuisine is heavily influenced by the country’s large Indo-Guyanese community, descendants of indentured servants brought by British colonists. (English is still the national language.) There is the famous and bustling Shanta’s for roti and curry, but I preferred the calmer Coalpot, a cafeteria-style spot on the second floor of yet another classic old building. My spicy chunks of curried fish, vegetable fried rice and two glasses of fruit punch cost just 1,160 Guyanese dollars.

They say you can’t visit Guyana without seeing Kaieteur Falls, and they’re right. I did it the cheapest way possible, a four-hour excursion from Air Services Limited.

The flight itself was just as dramatic as the falls. I got a sense of the country’s geography soon after taking off from puny Ogle Airport (with 12 other tourists). The city and its agricultural outskirts dropped away rapidly, and I spent most of the hourlong trip staring out at infinite rain forest canopy, uninterrupted except by rivers and occasional gashes of gold and diamond mines.

After landing at a modest airstrip that seemed to appear out of nowhere, we were met by an Amerindian guide. He took us on a path through what felt like archetypal jungle, past Tarzan-worthy vines, bird of paradise flowers and inchlong golden frogs, which live their whole lives in the leaves of the giant tank bromeliad plant.

We emerged on a cliff beside the falls, which are more than four times as high as Niagara Falls, yet entirely lacking the crowds. Instead of souvenir stands, these falls are surrounded by a landscape even more magical. Over a rainbow (yes, over), a zigzagging river flitted in and out of view behind impossibly lush hills staggered on either side.

But that was only the second greatest moment of the trip. The first was just before I left Bartica, during my visit — at my drinking companion Eon’s invitation — to the Five Star Mineral Trading office. Eon had a worker pull a brick of gold worth, they said, about $50,000 or so, and let me hold it. It was mesmerizing both for its brilliant shine and the visions it inspired of replacing trips characterized by cheap curries with ones featuring Michelin-starred feasts. I briefly considered making a run for it, but I’m far too honest. And the guard’s M-16 was far too big.