The Trinidad Guardian -Online Edition Ver 2.0

Enchanted by the Giant Victoria Lilly

Last week we were playing with a giant otter pup at Karanambo in the interior of Guyana, which was an amazing experience. But there was more to come as Diane and the excellent guides at the Karanambo ranch took us on the Rupununi River at night. But I warn you, gently drifting down a river in the middle of nowhere in the pitch darkness is not for the faint hearted.

The first thing the guides point out to you are the tracks on the river banks where the caiman have been basking in the sun. In case you are wondering a caiman looks much like a crocodile and can reach 12 feet in length!

The guides have amazing natural night vision and suddenly they will switch on their bright spotlights and there on the river bank, no more than ten feet from you is one of these 12-foot giants! Luckily they are nervous of human so they won’t come near you. Even if you are swimming, they will normally stay far away from you. At least that’s what Diane McTurk told us and none of us were willing to test her statements!

What was really amazing was the number of caiman we saw. At night many of them just laze in the water and their eyes reflect red in the spotlight. At one point while we were in the middle of the river, we counted no less than 20 of them. They were in every direction you looked so clearly this was not a good time to get a hole in the boat!

Evening time in the interior of Guyana is almost busier than in the daylight. There are birds like the Black Collared Hawk and the Cocoi Heron everywhere. There are fish catching bats, the long bearded Sakai monkey settling down in their roosts high in the trees on the river banks, and most amazing of all, the small tree boa curled around a branch overhanging the river.

Now, the Tree Boa can’t be more than two or three feet in length but their colouring makes them almost impossible to spot, unless you are an Amerindian guide of course. Even when they were just a few feet away, and with a bright spotlight shinning on them, it might take your eyes several minutes to differentiate between tree trunk and Tree Boa.

But the highlight of the evening ride on the river must be the sight of the Giant Victoria Water Lilly flower opening. The leaf of the lilly, which is Guyana’s National Flower, can be ten feet or more across and the sandpiper sized Purple Gallineau can be seen walking around on them without even denting the surface.

The flower of the Lilly is almost the size of a breadfruit and takes about 40 minutes to fully open. So this is when the indomitable Diane McTurk produces her delicious rum punch from a cooler she had kept hidden in the back of the boat. Two or three of these wonderful drinks and a sky full of stars above and you really do feel at peace with the world.

The fragrance from the flower is beautiful and before long it attracts dozens of insects. Incredibly the first night the flower opens it contains female spoors, the second night the same flower opens it contains male spoors. So as the beetles move from flower to flower they cross pollinate the lillies.

But all good things come to an end (and the rum punch was finished) so it was back to Karanambo for a great night’s rest before making the final leg of our journey back to Georgetown.

Of course finding our way back to the “main” road from Karanambo was just as exciting as coming in. It was so rough at one point a boy on a bicycle passed us straight! The trail is so rarely driven that we had to take a detour near Kwaimatta Village because some woman had her clothes line full of washing strung between two trees on either side of the road!

The actual journey from Annai to Georgetown was reasonably uneventful if you count nearly turning over twice as we hit deep patches of loose sand at speed. But we made it and can look back on an amazing adventure—right in a country that is just one hour away.

Next week: Back to the statistics and graphs I’m afraid.