Kaieteur Falls, Guyana

Absolutely awesome, is all I could think of after seeing Kaieteur Falls for the first time as our 9 seater plane flew low in the huge gorge following the Potaro river from the Pakaraima Mountains and over the 741 feet falls.

View from above (taken with a cheap camera)

Yes, I had seen the brochures and it had looked fabulous, but my friends were right when they told me that you had not seen Guyana if you had not seen the falls.

Expensive to get there yes, but worth every dollar.

All I could think of was that if Jamaica had something like that we would have 6 million tourists per year, not 3 million. 

Yet Guyana is so rich in gold, forestry, bauxite, diamonds and now oil, that they pay tourism scant regard. 

It is also amazing that a huge country like that with all its natural charm only had just over one hundred and forty thousand visitors last year and most were Guyanese who live abroad. 

To get to what must really be the 8th wonder of the world (the Guyanese call it that) we set out from the International airport in a 9 seater twin propeller plane flown by Captain Anil Ranglochan and believe it or not, I got my first flying lesson. For I had the honour of sitting with him in the cockpit where I got the opportunity to use the foot directional pedals and the steering wheel looking instrument which you pull up to get the nose of the plane up and push down to descend. 

It was quite an exhilarating experience but I didn't try it for too long, thinking I might just dump us all in the thick jungle below.😄

And thick jungle it is for it was not until we had flown about 20 minutes before we saw clearings where the mining sites at Mazaruni where they are extracting gold and diamonds at a rapid rate.

Apart from that there are few clearings before the Potaro River and the breathtaking  plateau and gorge comes into view. When we landed at the small airstrip, we were 1500 feet above sea level. Our guide was a Patamouk Amerindian (that's the tribe that discovered the falls) named Leroy. He lives in a cottage with five other guides at the national park but the nearest village to them is 20 minutes away by foot. The name of that village is Chenapaya and has a population of between 600 and 700, many of whom are Guyanese rastas.

From that village one has to walk for two more days to find another settlement. Deep, deep forest indeed.

We got our first view of the falls from Boys Scout view and that when we learnt that the width of the falls was approximately half of the 400 foot width that you see during the rainy season.

 According to Leroy at full blast, these falls dump 136,000 gallons of water per second in to the valley below. 

Boy those Amerindians were certainly right when they called Guyana the "land of many waters".
The flora around the falls are unbelievable as are the stark raw cliff

 edges.

Next we took in the view from Rainbow View and from the number of rainbows that sprung up in the prisms, the name was well selected.

Next we went to the top of the falls to see the water coming down the huge river to the edge. It was here that a young Guyanese girl on tour, ran past the guide two years ago to her death. This was actually the first suicide at that site in recent times although the legend is that it was named for Kai, a chief, or Toshao who acted to save his people by paddling over the falls in an act of self-sacrifice to

Makonaima, the great spirit.

As I am one who does not like heights, I could not even contemplate anything so dramatic but since I couldn't swim, I doused myself with some of the warm, comforting  water.

After what was a really wonderful tour, we flew over large sections of the Essequibo river and really got an opportunity to see the vastness of that magnificent river with its numerous islands.

A tour that was really worth it all the way.

 For additional photographs, see; 
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