Travelling from Honduras to Guyana was not easy. I had to get from Central America to South America, and in the way was the Darien Gap in Panama. This was a vast jungle swamp with no roads or vehicle access. It had defeated road engineers for centuries.
During the California gold rush, the lives of countless Argonauts were lost through malaria and yellow fever while they crossed the Panamanian jungles from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I did not intend to become a more contemporary gold rush casualty so, as a twentieth-century Argonaut, I decided to fly. Few airlines serviced Guyana, so I took the short and inexpensive flight to Caracas in Venezuela and then planned to travel east overland to neighbouring Guyana.
I arrived in Caracas in the small hours. Riding the airport bus into town, it looked like a mean city: rubbish-strewn streets with dilapidated concrete buildings. A few dirt-poor people scurried between the shadows and the illumination from the cars and few street lights that worked. There was an air of desperation about the place. From the grubby bus window I saw a person dressed in rags getting mugged by another person dressed in rags. I waited at the main bus depot until dawn, and then found a modest and secure-looking hotel within walking distance.
My best protection from foul play was that the people in Venezuela were generally lighter skinned than those in Central America. With my suntan, military demeanour and haircut, I could easily pass as a member of the Venezuelan military. In Venezuela people did not mess with the military, which suited me just fine. Mind you, I still had to communicate and my accent was a dead giveaway.
I went to the Guyanese embassy to get a visa. This was tricky. In 1990, Guyana was still a fairly closed and somewhat paranoid country, caught in the middle of the Cold War stoush between Russia and the USA. The visa officer could not believe that someone wanted to enter Guyana as a tourist. It took considerable persuasion to convince her of the attractions of her own country. Just as well I did not tell her the real reason for my visit.
There was also a complete lack of information as to how to get into Guyana via Venezuela. All I had was a map. From Caracas I planned to simply work my way ever eastwards by bus, figuring that sooner or later I must end up in Guyana.
The closest town to the Guyanese border and to the coast was a place called Barrancas, on the banks of the mighty Orinoco River, so that was where I headed.
I have always been a dreamer. On the long bus journeys through Venezuela, I thought about the prospecting glory that awaited me on the dredges in Guyana. My gravitas was undone by an incident that happened while changing buses in the dusty Venezuelan town of Temblador. My bus was late, and when it finally arrived in the town, the connecting bus to Barrancas had been waiting hours for the transfer passengers. The doormen hassled us to quickly switch buses, and tried to manhandle me.
‘Manos fuera. Yo no soy un perro,’ I spat at them. (Hands off. I’m not a dog.)
This quick-fire Spanish was rewarded with hysterical laughter. My colloquial language was clearly not yet authentic.
As my bus set off on the rutted road to Barrancas, I felt a bit deflated. I stared out of the window and reflected. I could still take my gold rush undertaking seriously, but perhaps I shouldn’t be taking myself quite so seriously.
Barrancas was civilised, but only just. The town was a rag-tag collection of concrete slum dwellings with peeling bright paint; the weather was hot and humid. Then I saw the river, over 2 kilometres wide at this point, the vast, muddy and majestic Orinoco River. It took my breath away.
Barrancas is the last town on the Orinoco before it splits into its vast delta. It had a frontier atmosphere similar to the Petén in Guatemala: dirt roads and cowboys. I asked around for a way to Guyana and looked at some local maps.
There were no roads or even tracks. Barring the way were virgin jungle, mountain plateaus and the world’s highest waterfall – Angel Falls.
Walking east looked impractical. I did not have the gear or the crew to take on some quite serious mountains, as well as jungle. It was time for plan B, as I had learned in Honduras: when in doubt, go to the port and ask around.
The ‘port’ at Barrancas was a low concrete wharf servicing a collection of small narrow wooden boats that plied the river. I asked around to see if anyone knew how I could get a lift to Guyana. A gang of sinister-looking youths eyed me off from the sidelines, perhaps sensing a payday. Bizarrely, they all wore identical Miami Dolphins baseball caps, which for some reason added to their menace.
After a few false starts, I was shown to a small boat. The captain reckoned he could help and I got aboard, sitting on a wooden plank with a few other passengers. I paid the nominal fare, and as we set off I gave the youths a friendly wave. It pays to travel light.
The boat trip was refreshingly cool after the oppressive heat of the town. We rode downstream for an hour, stopping a couple of times, the vessel totally insignificant on this huge river. On the banks, there was the odd house and clearing, then, as we travelled swampy forest gradually took over.
Eventually we went up a small tributary; numerous vines snaked their way down from the treetops to the river. We slowed and stopped at a jungle shanty that was built over the muddy water. It consisted of a random collection of bamboo huts and fuel tanks supported above the water on stilts. One of the huts was a shop; another had food. A few rangy-looking, barefooted men watched our arrival with interest. The odd hammock indicated a sleeping form. Two mangy dogs sniffed around.
It looked like a privateer’s base, but was in fact a fuel-smuggling depot. Venezuela is a major producer of oil and, as such, fuel is dirt cheap. On the other hand, the surrounding countries in the Caribbean, including Guyana, have high excise duties and thus expensive petrol and diesel. So a large fuel-smuggling industry exists in the Orinoco delta servicing nearby Caribbean markets.
We pulled up at a rough jetty built of timber and the boat captain indicated that this was my stop, so I clambered out. I noticed one of the huts had two attractive and scantily clad young women sitting out the front and I got an encouraging smile. Then I saw a spraypainted red love heart on the door of the hut.
The boat captain shouted to a man and waved him over, pointing at me. Up walked Rick and introduced himself. He was a fit-looking thickset guy of mixed race and was a Guyanese fuel smuggler.
We got straight down to business.
‘You want to go to Guyana, my friend?’ Rick asked in the identical accent to my old pal Jerome.
‘Yes please.’
‘No problem. A hundred US dollars and I’ll take you through.’
That seemed reasonable to me. Rick didn’t ask me my business and I didn’t tell him. We walked down the jetty and wound past the huts, talking as we went, our feet springing on the bamboo underlay. Rick seemed happy that I was British and said he wished the British were still running Guyana. We walked out of the hutted area onto another even shorter jetty.
‘Here she is,’ Rick said proudly.
‘She’ was an open, wooden riverboat roughly 10 metres long with two large outboard engines. The water was barely 50 centimetres beneath the gunnels. The vessel was packed with 44-gallon drums of fuel stacked up like a long pyramid. It looked horribly top heavy.
He is actually proposing to go into the open sea on this thing?
‘She looks great, Rick, thanks,’ I whispered.
‘Sleep on board. We’ll leave early in the morning.’ Rick put his hand out for the fare. I paid him and was rewarded with a big grin. He turned and hollered for one of the girls he knew from the love-heart hut.
I went up to the food shack, ate some freshly made arepas (a spicy corn pancake filled with meat and vegetables) and had a couple of cold Polar beers that tasted great. I bought some extra arepas to take along for the trip.
Back in the boat I found a spot between the drums to lie down and some old newspapers for bedding, I set up my mosquito net and, despite the stink of diesel, I went to sleep, hoping the drums would not roll on top of me in the night.
I was awoken at dawn when Rick started up the outboard engines. Within a few minutes we were out of the tributary where the smugglers had their den. We worked our way through the myriad channels that make up the 200-kilometre-wide Orinoco delta.
Rick seemed to know his way around. He told me that he had been doing the journey since he was a kid. The riverbanks were an impenetrable mass of vines and foliage all competing for sunlight; rising behind them was the canopy of giant mahogany trees. Flocks of brilliantly coloured birds regularly broke cover.
After about seven hours the air started to smell salty and the channel widened out: we were approaching the sea. It was only choppy, which was bad enough, and the bailing pump was working flat-out to get rid of the water that washed over the gunnels. I didn’t fancy our chances in rough weather, but Rick looked confident.
Once in open sea, we turned east and steamed along at about 10 knots, keeping within sight of land, which I was happy about – I was a fair swimmer and could probably make land at a push, although after that your problems would only be starting as you negotiated the endless mangroves. The breeze was chilly and Rick threw me a yellow waterproof jacket to keep the wind and minor spray off.
We kept going all day and the chop remained manageable. I made the odd brew on Rick’s kerosene stove and we shared some food. Over the noise of the engines, we chatted and I asked him about Guyana.
‘It’s been totally wrecked by that scunt Burnham,’ he said emphatically.
‘Who is Burnham?’
‘A crazy man, dead now, thank de Lord. He was our dumb-arse president since independence [from Britain in 1966] and he ruined the place. Can you imagine, the guy banned imported food, made bread illegal and nationalised every damn thing. Unbelievable, man, he totally screwed it up; you couldn’t buy nuthin.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘In ’bout eighty-five, Burnham had an operation in Georgetown. The Cuban doctors killed him. Good doctors, them Cubans. Dey reckon it was revenge for Burnham killing their man Teekah in Guyana.’
Burnham’s body was mummified by the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow, which probably sums it up nicely.
From Rick’s summary of the politics, it looked like we were sailing into a paranoid one-party state in total economic disarray. He told me that the secret police were on the nasty side too; I would need to watch my step.
‘Why do you do this trip alone?’ I asked him.
‘I prefer it, and I don’t want anyone knowing I have a girlfriend in Venezuela. I can go a night without sleep.’
‘What does scunt mean?’
‘It’s a bad person,’ he laughed.
I told Rick of my gold-mining plans, and he was interested. Rick was smuggling fuel for a local trader, and its ultimate destination was the gold and diamond dredges on the rivers in the Guyanese interior. He described these dredges to me in detail, which sounded promising.
‘Just watch out for the police on da river, Jim, they’ll rob you blind if you don’t have some protection.’
During my travels so far, people seemed far more worried about the police and army than about any criminals. I figured it might be prudent to get my passport stamped, so I was at least legally in the country.
‘Dere’s an immigration office in Georgetown, they’ll fix you up,’ Rick said.
The wind had died down now and with it the chop. The Guyanese coastline remained clearly visible – mile after mile of uninhabited jungle, mangroves and mud flats.
I napped on and off through the chilly night, getting up a couple of times to make a brew for us both. I was used to lack of sleep from the army and it didn’t bother me. Rick seemed to half doze at the tiller.
At dawn I looked at the land. Not much had changed except that now we came across the odd settlement with palm-roofed shacks made of bamboo or wood. Eventually Rick turned the boat to enter what looked like a massive inland sea. We had arrived at the Essequibo River, the largest river in Guyana.
The scale of this river was hard to take in from a small boat. To give some idea, Rick pointed out a particular island that was bigger than Barbados. It was a vast wilderness of forest, swamp and open river.
Around 10 a.m., we reached Rick’s destination, Bartica. We landed at a large wooden jetty alongside a couple of other fuel boats and some smaller tenders.
I shook hands with Rick and sincerely thanked him for the safe passage. I scrambled onto the jetty, watched by some inquisitive Guyanese, black skinned and very different in looks from the Venezuelans I had left behind.
Bartica was an unkempt trading town of about a hundred single- and double-storey buildings. It had been set up at a strategic entry point to the jungle interior, or bush as the Guyanese called it. The town was a service centre, where you could find fuel, food, supplies, equipment and mechanical repair shops. Signage showed merchants were buying gold and diamonds, which was encouraging.
I managed to change some of my US dollars here for local Guyanese dollars. Roughly one US dollar bought 120 ‘G dollars’, as they were known. Then at a food cart I bought some cook-up rice – a flavoursome hotpot of meat, peas and rice in coconut water – which hit the spot.
Occasional wooden boats were coming and going like taxis, and I decided to press on to the capital Georgetown to get my passport stamped. I caught a fast boat from Bartica to Parika, 60 kilometres downstream on the eastern bank of the Essequibo River.
We bounced over the water at breakneck speed and landed at Parika just before I vomited from motion sickness. I stepped ashore among a sprawl of boats and people. Close by was a battered-looking minibus with loud reggae music coming from it; a man in the doorway was shouting, ‘Georgetown, Georgetown.’
I climbed on board.
If’d I stuck out in Central America, I looked like an absolute alien here. Everybody was either black or dark-skinned Indian. Although I didn’t feel hassled or threatened in any way, I did take the precaution of asking a fellow passenger the price of the fare to Georgetown. This was just as well, as when the doorman came to take my money he did try it on – in a good-natured way.
I always carry earplugs when I am travelling and, despite being a Bob Marley fan, I really needed them for the hour it took to get to Georgetown on the rough road. The other passengers welcomed me like an old friend, sharing food and laughter. It was a far cry from the surly tube passengers of London. The mood was infectious and I was tired, but happy with my progress. People here spoke English too, or at least an understandable Creole version, which made things easier.
We arrived at the chaotic bus station near Stabroek Market in central Georgetown. I followed the mouth-watering smell of food and was rewarded with the best chicken curry and roti I had ever tasted.
I started looking for a guesthouse, taking in the pungent smells as I walked. The streets pulsated. It was a place of superlatives: the friendliest people, the most persuasive con men, the loudest music, the craziest traffic, all set against a swaying backdrop of the most achingly beautiful girls.
It was dusk and, with a bit of help, I found a guesthouse called Trio La Chalet which was clean and, importantly, safe; the streets looked like they could get a bit tasty after dark. I washed with a bucket of cold water and fell into bed. I was dog-tired.
Early the next morning, I awoke in a brooding frame of mind. In the headlong rush to get into Guyana, I really hadn’t considered what I would do when I actually arrived. The arrogance and optimism of youth had carried me along so far – it was a classic case of act, then think – but now I was thinking and I realised my position was not great. With my money running low, crunch time was upon me.
I concluded that before I could set up some kind of mining operation, I needed to fix four main problems – there were lots of others, but these were the main ones: lack of money, lack of knowledge, lack of contacts and lack of legal papers to work.
One of these problems I could probably overcome, two posed a challenge, three might not end well, but all four problems together were a recipe for disaster. This dawning reality was not helping my confidence and I felt a bit down, daunted by what I was trying to achieve. How on earth was I going to make a fortune here, surrounded by some of the poorest people on the planet? I had no local contacts or knowledge and did not know how to go about gold mining, which was the very thing I had come here for in the first place.
I have always had the habit of writing down quotes in my diary. During moments of self-doubt, I would browse these lines for inspiration and I did so now, opening a page at the following: ‘Keep on going and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.’
If that was good enough for Charles F. Kettering, inventor of the auto starter motor, it was good enough for me.
I ventured out, seeking breakfast and opportunity. It was humid and warm, even at that early hour. Most buildings were wooden and poorly maintained. There were numerous ditches and small canals with the smell of rotting vegetation.
In one part of the city I came across a most striking building. A sign said:
St George’s Cathedral, one of the tallest wooden buildings in the world at 44 metres. Built 1892.
An entire cathedral, all made of wood, complete with flying buttresses. I stared up at the structure, suitably impressed.
‘What do you do, man?’ a voice said.
The speaker was an engaging yet somewhat grubby Guyanese man who looked a bit down on his luck.
‘I’m a geologist.’ It was kind of true.
‘That’s exactly what I wanted to be, you know, but I never got the schooling chance,’ he said. ‘I love geology.’
I perked up a bit at meeting a kindred geological spirit (although I suspected that if I had told him I was a dentist his reply would have been suitably amended).
‘Let me show you where the geologists hang,’ he said.
‘That would be terrific, thanks,’ I said politely.
‘No problem, just one little thing, could you just gimme a one, one raise, nah?’
I hadn’t quite got the Creole thing yet, but it was clear where he was coming from, in a financial sense.
I would have cut off proceedings at that point but, then again, I needed some kind of a break; maybe it was worth seeing ‘where the geologists hang’.
I bought him breakfast on the way in lieu of payment: fried plantain and coffee. We eventually found ourselves in a better part of town outside a handsome, colonial, three-storey wooden house. There was a large sign hanging on the gate:
No Hawkers
No Beggars
No Jobs
In other words: Fuck Off.
It looked like I had been conned out of breakfast. I gave my friend a glance.
‘No man – look,’ he said pointing to a different, smaller sign that said ‘Golden Star Resources Limited’.
‘They use geologists,’ he said earnestly.
It seemed absurd, but as my entire plan was somewhat daft, I had nothing to lose. The only problem was that I had absolutely no idea what a geologist even did for a company like this, far less being able to actually do it.
I gave the large security guard a wave and he came over. I took the direct approach.
‘Hi, I’m a geologist and, er, I’m looking for a job.’
I don’t think he heard the second bit. He just heard the magic word ‘geologist’, saw I was white and, with a big grin, open sesame: not a bad start.
The ‘Fuck Off’ sign clearly did not apply to white geologists.
I thanked my friend with a tip and in I went. Sensing further payoffs, he tried to follow, but melted away under the hazing stare of the security guard.
A short Indian-looking guy sat behind an imposing desk in a large hot office on the top floor. He eyed me suspiciously, then introduced himself as Hilbert Shields, the exploration manager. Clearly the boss of the outfit.
Hilbert also introduced me to David Fennell, a Canadian. Sitting in the corner of the office chain-smoking, he was a giant, far larger than anyone I had come across in the army. My hand was lost in the handshake.
It was now my turn. I had to come out with some magic to the unspoken question that hung heavily in the air – ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I have a geology degree from London University, some field experience,’ (bit of a stretch) ‘and I’m looking for work,’ I gushed.
I racked my brain for something geologically intelligent to say, but I couldn’t remember a damn thing from my degree, and I started to dry up. Hilbert and David, looking unimpressed, began to stir. Instinctively I ploughed on.
‘I just left the British Parachute Regiment. I finished a tour of Northern Ireland, which was interesting, so my man-management skills are strong.’
Hilbert coughed importantly to stop my blathering; I could feel myself sweating.
‘How many people have you killed?’ David Fennell asked from the corner.
That took the wind out of my sails. ‘Er … well, I didn’t actually kill anyone in the army,’ I said.
The big man looked disappointed, so I felt somewhat obliged to at least warm to the subject.
‘We were bombed in the base at Crossmaglen, though, and the IRA shot down a chopper just before I arrived.’
David cheered up a little.
‘What experience in mineral exploration do you have?’ Hilbert asked, looking impatient.
I wasn’t sure if this was a good cop/bad cop thing. I was so green I didn’t even know what mineral exploration was, so this was a bit trickier. Not understanding an apparently obvious question was not an option, so I struggled on.
‘I, um … I did a number of field trips at univer–’
David Fennell interrupted me: ‘What weapons did you carry in Northern Ireland?’
This was getting ridiculous. I was trying to impress the boss with my geological skills and this guy kept asking me questions about killing people.
I told him we carried SA80s, 5.56 mm, which had great sights. ‘Now, about this field trip,’ I said.
David stood up. ‘Hilbert, give this maniac a job,’ he said, and promptly left.
Right. David was the boss.
Hilbert sat up and said magnanimously: ‘Jim, congratulations. I’m pleased to offer you a position with Golden Star Resources.’
He then added ominously, ‘You are lucky that David is so keen on the military.’
David Fennell was something of a legendary figure. The president and founder of Golden Star Resources, he was a former Canadian football star who was in the Football Hall of Fame. His nickname was Doctor Death, a sobriquet earned through inventing some notably gruesome type of football tackle.
He was also a military fanatic.
It was twenty-four hours since I had landed in Guyana. Now, with one silver bullet, I had solved my four main problems.
It really does pay to turn up, even if you don’t know what you’re doing.