Guyana travel guide

Guyana is where the mighty Amazon rainforest meets the Atlantic by way of savannah – a jumble of ecosystems that sees it brimming with wildlife, most notably 870 species of birds, plus tapirs, caimans and jaguar. There are people here, too – but only 800,000, clustered mostly along the coast. Much of the interior remains uninhabited, save for a few Amerindian villages deep within the jungle; a snapshot of pre-Columbian life. Here, far from major human settlements, the wildlife seems undisturbed by the occasional intrepid visitor.
Guyana’s jungles hide giants, from bird eating spiders to enormous otters, anteaters and armadillos.
As this Guyana travel guide shows, those wishing to discover Guyana’s forests for themselves will encounter challenges – starting with simply getting here. Traveling around could be euphemistically described as “eventful”, and hotels are replaced with rustic huts or swaying hammocks. But you don’t come for the comforts – you come for the astonishing natural environment, and the life-affirming experience of being surrounded by rainforest in which few will ever have the chance to set foot.

Guyana is...

the size of the UK, with the population of Leeds.

Guyana isn’t…

Spanish speaking. English is the official language, with Creole widely spoken.

What we rate & what we don’t in Guyana

Underrated

Jungle trekking

Not for the faint-hearted, trekking in Guyana can be challenging and steep. Fallen trees make impromptu bridges and when there’s no fallen tree you’ll simply wade or swim across jungle creeks. It takes three days to trek to Kaieteur Falls from the mining town of Mahdia, Central Guyana. One trail to the waterfall has a section simply known as ‘Oh My God’.

Small wildlife

Pick a Guyanese animal of interest and you’ll find an ecolodge in Guyana where your interest is met with equal enthusiasm by their experts. There are many animals in Guyana that need more monitoring, so any outsider interest is very welcome. Keen tourists don’t just bring money to remote lodges, but also extra pairs of eyes, more expeditions and more sightings, all of which help with conservation efforts.

Food

Rotis and curries, pickled mango and tamarind balls, warm tennis rolls, fish broth, fried plantain, cook-up rice, fresh coconut milk, cassava cake – ‘the land of six peoples’ has a whole lot of food heritage. It’s not always cheap to get food in Guyana, but local dishes are often filling and comforting, combining the best of Caribbean, Indian, Brazilian and Chinese cuisines.

Mangroves

As global warming raises sea levels, Guyana is rushing to restore its coastal mangrove forest so that the roots of the salt-tolerant trees anchor the remaining mud and sand in place. It costs a lot less to plant mangrove than it does to reinforce the coast with concrete wall, as the Guyana Mangrove Restoration Project, begun in 2010, has shown. Georgetown, the capital, is a risky six feet below sea level.
Rated

Landscape

Guyana’s shield forest and savannah landscapes are full of surprises. The highest point in the country, Mount Roraima, sits on the Guyana border with Brazil and Venezuela, a table mountain that’s the source of many of the country’s rivers. There are plants here found nowhere else in the world – many carnivorous, eking out an existence on insects, as they cling to the barren plateau.

Kaieteur Falls

The largest single-drop waterfall in the world – twice the height of Niagara and 100m wide after a good rain – is found in a marvellously remote jungle setting. Kaieteur is not only visited for the water, but for the wildlife. In a land wet with mist, tiny golden frogs live their whole lives in water-filled bromeliads and slipper orchids sway, out of the reach of enchanted collectors.

Community-based tourism

If you want to visit the interior, you’ll stay in a lodge that is owned by, or run for the benefit of, the local community – there’s simply no other accommodation around, so community-based tourism is an innate part of the existing tourism model in Guyana. This small-scale tourism is pricier than mass tourism that you’ll see in other places, as it cannot scale. But it’s worth it.

Visiting more than one Guyana

By visiting Guyana, then Suriname and French Guiana you are visiting three of the former five Guianas. They come in quick succession, and you’ll use canoes to cross the rivers at their borders. Prepare for cultural whiplash, though – you’re in a French department one minute, enjoying noodles in a Hmong community, the next day you’re at a Sikh festival, or enjoying Amerindian hospitality in a rainforest lodge.
Overrated

Going solo

Guyana is not at all set up for backpackers. You won’t find many hostels, nor accessible ways to get to the jungle under your own steam. If you managed to get to the interior alone, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to spot wildlife without experienced trackers and guides. Guyana is a country where an organised tour really is the best way to get spontaneous wildlife sightings.

Regular-sized otters

Why have a small animal when you can have a super-sized one? Rupununi, Guyana’s savannah-cloaked south-west region, is sometimes called ‘the land of the giants’ due to the abundance of creatures that are the largest in their genus. You get giant anteaters, giant armadillos, capybaras, bird-eating spiders, the largest scaled freshwater fish – and, of course, giant river otters.

Dodgy resorts

We mean resorts that are funded by gold mining investment, have been built on land that was first-growth forest, and that have on-site zoos – glorified complexes of caged animals. In most of Guyana, community-based tourism is the de facto option, therefore it seems a shame that tourism on a larger and less sustainable scale is on the rise.

Lethem Rodeo

The Easter rodeo at Lethem, Rupununi, draws a large number of tourists from Guyana and the bordering areas of Brazil. Spectacles include wild cow milking and catching a greasy pig. We do not recommend visiting rodeos and stampedes because of the many animal welfare issues associated with them, among them the needless fear, pain and stress animals endure in many of their events.

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Food, shopping & people

Eating & drinking in Guyana

7 curry – multiple curries served over rice – is enjoyed in Guyana during special celebrations. The dish came from the Indo-Guyanese cuisine and was originally vegetarian. For true spectacle, it’s often served on a giant native waterlily leaf.

Cow heel soup is a popular dish in Guyana – as it is in the Caribbean. It’s just one of the many links Guyana has with the islands. The dish includes cow feet and might be thickened with plantain, eddeo and cassava.

You’ll find many restaurants serving Indian, Chinese, Caribbean and Brazilian cuisine in Georgetown – testament to the country’s diverse population and influences.
Cricket is the national sport. Bourda, Georgetown’s cricket ground, is the only Test cricket ground in the world that’s below sea level.

People & language

The only South American country where the official language is English, the vast majority of Guyanese people have Guyanese Creole, known as Creolese, as their native tongue. It contains influences from Berbice, Arawak, Carib, Bhojpuri, Akan, Kikongo and Yoruba. Amerindian languages are also present in Amerindian communities.
St George’s Cathedral, Georgetown, is one of the largest wooden structures in the world.

Gifts & shopping

Guyana is expensive, as many items are imported, but Guyanese rum and Demerara sugar – both products of its sugar cane plantations – are common, as are other sugar-related gifts. El Dorado rum is made on the banks of the Demerara River and you’ll find bottles of it for sale in many places.

Woven handicrafts such as baskets, hats and hammocks, and beaded jewellery can be purchased from local communities. Avoid pieces containing bird feathers and other animal products, which may be made from endangered species.

A brief history of Guyana

Arawak and Carib peoples were the first people living in Guyana. The region was occupied by humans comparatively late – possibly from 1,000 BC, and peoples hunted and farmed. By the 15th century, the Kalihna-Kalinago people emerged as one of the most aggressive warrior tribes in the region, using sail-fitted canoes to travel between the Caribbean and the coast of South America.

European colonisers eventually discovered the area. Ignored at first by the Spanish (Colombus is recorded sighting Guyana from the sea in 1498), the region was eventually settled by the Dutch, who created trading posts from the late 1500s along the rivers near the coast. Arriving Europeans spread diseases that wiped out a lot of the original population of the country, and remaining Indigenous people retreated to the interior. Read more
Written by Eloise Barker
Photo credits: [Page banner: US Embassy Guyana] [Is/isnt: Anna M] [Intro: David Stanley] [Caiman House: Ivan Mangal] [Georgetown: David Stanley] [Kaieteur Falls: Bill Cameron]