Trip to the Pomeroon

Demerara Harbour Bridge

I wait for Aunt Zena at the Demerara Harbour Bridge; this is the pontoon bridge that connects the East Bank Demerara to the West Bank, said to be the longest pontoon bridge in the world. It opens and closes at various times of the day to allow shops to pass, so one has to time one's crossing fairly well. According to Wikipedia:  The bridge is approximately 1.25 miles (2.01 km) long and has 61 spans. A high-level span provides a horizontal clearance of 32.0 metres (105 ft) and a vertical clearance of 7.9 metres (26 ft) to let small craft pass at all times. To let large craft pass, two retractor spans retract fully to leave a horizontal clearance of 77.4 metres (254 ft).
Aunt Zena arrives in her white car, picks me up, and off we go.

The drive to Parika along the West Coast Demerara is uneventful, and takes about an hour. Aunt Zena parks the car at the Police Station (apparently with special permission) and arranges for her luggage, which includes several bookes of seedlings, to the stelling.

Many people, passengers and crew, are milling about and it all seems very disorganised, but eventually we are assigend to one of the speedboats picking up passengers, handed our lifejackets, cover ourselves up to the neck in tarpaulins, and set off.

The Essequibo is one hell of a mighty river. Here, near the estuary, it's 132 miles across. That's 215 kilometers. In breadth. I mean, the whole of Barbados could fit in this river, and that gives just an inkling just how vast Guyana is -- for a small insignificant country, that is. I won't compare it with its neighbour Brazil to the south, or the Essequibo with the Amazon river; but I've seen both, and when you look at the horizon and see a hazy stripe of land across the water, and you're told that that's just an island--well that's exactly how it was on the Amazon. In other words, this is one wide river.

I happen to have been given an end seat on the speedboat. That's bad. It means I get wet. In spite of the tarpaulin. Once we get going river water practically streams into the boat, and once you get used to it it's not even that unpleasant; that's because the water isn't cold, it's cool, and rather refreshing. By the time we get to Supenaam on the other side I am thoroughly soaked through. But getting a good soaking meand nothing in the tropics. I change into dry clothes in somebody's empty room, get into the car that has come to meet us, and off we go again.

Anyway, as they say, a picture s worth a thousand words so I won't waste any more of the latter. I've finally managed to edit some of my films together to make a more or less coherent video, so here goes, in the next blog post.