Best Cottages Wild life – Holidays Lodges
Guyana, ten times the size of Wales consists a population of one million who live mostly on the coastal strip. The country attracts fewer than 3,000 tourists a year. It is a paradise for the lazy nature lovers.
Diane McTurk is world-famous for looking after orphaned giant otters at Karanambu Ranch ;
it has been in her family for about a century where she returned permanently 30 years ago and began to welcome paying guests at the ranch where the accommodation is basic, there’s no hot water and you could find the roof is open at the sides to the elements.
On a lazy boat trip along the Rupununi river you may watch dragonflies the size of Churchill’s cigars, lily pads bigger than satellite dishes, the scaly backs of arapaima (a colossal freshwater fish) and, of course, the giant otter. There could be more river trips lined up as you glide along the river you watch butterflies and all sorts of birds which engulfs your boat. As well as birds, the other big draw in Guyana is the fabled jaguar.
A speedboat could whisk you through rainforest, taking the bends on the snaking river like a motorbike would go round corners in a street race. The road to Surama Eco Lodge meanders through dense jungle where you could spot a macaw flying snub-nosed overhead without the expert eye of a tour guide to point it out.
It’s easy to imagine you’re in a BBC wildlife documentary while walking through this exotic forest scape. You may hear a shriek of an insect that spends 13 years underground before it emerges screaming into daylight for just 24 hours to find a mate. Then you get on to Clifford’s dug out canoe and drift through hot sticky super-nature on the Bora Bora river for best bird-spotting, ie. Toucans, guinness; woodpeckers & ciders. If there’s one bird in Guyana that you get surprised about is the cock of the rock.
At dawn you may go for another jungle walk and stumble on a group of black spider monkeys, an aggressive lot who may throw sticks and small branches at you with surprising force. Diane mentioned that although she’d been asked to upgrade the place, she’s keen not to do, as people should come there and enjoy it for what it is and because they want to. She thinks not every tourist experience has to come with hot and cold water, plunge pools and patios.