by Russell Smeaton

Created on: September 09, 2009

Guyana, The Land of Many Waters, is a country about the size of England with less than the population of my local town. The result? Around 70% of the country being untouched by humans, creating a rich and diverse area of some of the most spectacular rain forest still alive today. And no, it's not in Africa but near the top end of South America.

The rain forest is one of the biggest attractions for tourism to the country and rightly so. It's a lush, noisy, steamy location that I find irresistible. I'm going to tell you about a little trip a mate and I took to get from the capital of Georgetown right down to the Brazilian border. It was a great journey and a glimpse into the jungle. I took subsequent trips into that dense green home but this was my first adventure.

To get through to the Brazilian border can be done in a number of different ways. You could fly (too easy), drive a motorbike (too strenuous), cycle (too crazy) or get a seat on one of the logging trucks that chundered down the mud paths. We opted for a variation on the latter. Not a truck, but a seriously maxed out SUV that carried precious goods and people back and forth.

The first part of the trip involved making phone calls to find out when one of these SUVs was heading off. I left my name and number with a couple of likely candidates and waited to see if any would get back to me. About 9pm at night we were settling down to a nice cool bottle of Banks beer when the phone rang. Could we be ready in 15 minutes? Looking at that frosty glass of beer we collectively sighed and said no worries. One bottle of beer downed, some clothes jammed hastily in a bag, we were off. First stop was at KFC. Now normally I wouldn't dream of eating here but the beer had loosened my morals and we got a big bucket of chicken each. These buckets saved our lives. Stupidly, we had only packed a couple of bottles of water and some cheese sandwiches which, as it turned out, wouldn't have been enough.

The first couple of hours was along nice clean tarmacked roads. Progress was good and I felt myself getting sleepy. A sudden turn off the road soon woke me up and so started the journey. We bounced and bobbed along a dirt track before suddenly plunging into thick woods. The temperature rose dramatically and the windows started steaming up. The noise rose in proportion to heat - who would have imagined a few thousand insects working together could create such a racket? I peered through the steamy windows and kept a look out for

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