Henry in Guyana

Having been in Georgetown for nearly two weeks now, I have a few more observations to make. Firstly, transport around the city is quite good. Taxis are cheap at less than £1 for most journeys, and there are buses at around 30p. Tourists are generally advised against buses as they are dangerous - and I agree. I assume that by going faster they pick up more passengers and get more fares, but they are very aggressive, zoom around and are always overtaking. Buses are small minivan things (resembling a VW camper) and have the usual sliding door at the back. Every bus has a conductor, who has the role of hanging out of the window shouting at passers by, shuffling passengers and collecting money. It seems that like any half-decent single sculler, conductors have to have a definite style (dreadlocks, big sunglasses, jewelery etc.) presumably to attract attention.

Junctions in Georgetown are mainly hectic - there appears to be some unwritten rule about when to wait and when to go, but it requires care all round. There are some, apparently recently introduced, quite fancy traffic lights which count down until the next change which are interesting. A lot of private cars have big sound systems, and as such they tend to set of nearby car alarms. It also seems that all car alarms use the same sound chip as those toy laser gun things that change sound every 5 seconds.

There are food sellers everywhere - today I had another shark puri which cost me 90p and was more than enough. Apparently the way to make money here is to work for yourself, and the food carts stop by outside all the schools. It is likely that they make far more than the teachers do.

On a more sombre note, Georgetown has been going through a little trouble recently with a lot in the news - Brickdam police station just one block down from me was fired upon by a number of men with AK-47s as well as another police outpost. Don't worry mum - I'll try not to go for a stroll through any crossfire at 3am. There have also been other incidents including arson at a school, a kidnapping and one other which I won't link to here and involves a torture case. For a closer look at the current news see Kaiteur and Stabroek News.