The Essequibo River is the longest river in Guyana, and the largest river between the Orinoco and Amazon. Rising in the Acarai Mountains near the Brazil-Guyana border, the Essequibo flows to the north for 1,010 km through forest and savanna into the Atlantic Ocean.
I’m looking forward to getting back in the air and doing some more flying over Guyana! Presently in Georgetown, the capital which lies below sea level and defended from the ocean by a Dutch-built sea wall. It’s tropical, very tropical here right now and I’m guessing even hotter than Hades.
This small country, the third smallest in South America, is highly diverse, largely due to the stunning variety of topography. With Suriname, Venezuela and Brazil for neighbors it is surprising that English is the official language making travel easy. Less than 1,000,000 call Guyana home and most of those live on the thin coastal strip involved in the rice or sugar cane industries. Anything inland of the coast is known as the ‘Interior’ and a huge percentage of Guyanese have never crossed its threshold. A shame indeed as nearly 75% of the country is still intact, composed of distant and dramatic Tepuis, savannas dotted with extensive wetlands and millions of hectares of beautiful primary rainforest where jaguars can be seen regularly!
The objective this time, after having published one successful book on the area is to show off this diversity, from the air, to wow the Guyanese and hopefully to instill a sense of pride in their country. Without that basic requirement, we believe, conservation is not possible. Working in collaboration with WWF Guyana and the Guyana Defense Force helicopter crews we have a lot of work ahead of us and I intend to post as regularly as an internet connection allows. Wish us luck!
Pete Oxford
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