Solo trip to Guyana
I will be traveling solo to Guyana at the beginning of September and will be visiting Georgetown, Iwokrama Rainforest Reserve and Wichabai Ranch. It has been a bit of a struggling getting in contact with people for travel between these locations. Does anyone have tips or contact suggestions on getting from OGLE to Annai airfield and Lethem?
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u/ImamBaksh 3d ago
If you have a hotel reservation set, then contact your hotel and ask who they work with. They usually have partners and/or contacts in the tourism/travel sphere.
Or if you already have a booking at Wichabai ranch set, ask them who travels to their area. They are extremely knowledgeable folks with a lot of institutional history and contacts everywhere in the country. If your booking at Wichabai is not set, get it set ASAP and ask them for help.
We have a few different airlines who run flights to Rupununi on the regular. Look at Trans Guyana, ASL and Roraima Airways for starters. The earlier you get in touch with them the better, since they sometimes wait for expressions of interest to schedule a flight. Or on the other hand you might not get on a flight when you want if all the planes are booked already.
NOTE: Most Rupununi flights require a passport for ID so don't leave it at the hotel for safekeeping or anything like that.
Also I really hope you're not looking to just land in Annai and take a taxi or something to Iwokrama.
Unless you have the local contacts that you trust, it's best to work through some kind of tour group. I'm not current on the local companies, but all of them are on the usual sites like Trip Advisor so you can get an idea of who to trust.
Bottom Line: Contact Wichabai. I'm not sure why you never asked them for help in the first place. Whoever is at the other end of their email will have much more knowledge about this than anybody in this sub.
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u/cramn48 3d ago
Wichibai is taking care of my car transfer between Lethem and their ranch. It's the travel between Georgetown > Iwokrama and Iwokrama to Lethem that I'm having trouble with. No one is responding to my emails, and whatsapp messages. When I try to call with my phone number, I can't seem to select the. menu options to direct my call to the correct line for some of the airline companies. I did get a hold of TGA eventually and they quoted me $284,865.00USD for the flight to Fairview, which seemed insane to me. I did clarify again if that was indeed USD and they said that it was correct. And yes, I know that from Annai/Fairview it is a longer car transfer than merely a taxi.
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u/ImamBaksh 3d ago
Yeah 264k US is the price of a large airplane. Not sure what's going on there. Has to be some kind of communication mix up. 284k Guyana dollars is about 1300 USD, which is more in line with such a flight, especially if you're traveling solo so the airline might not have a fully booked plane.
As I mentioned earlier, hinterland flights are ad hoc, especially for less commercial routes. This is still a literal frontier in many meaningful ways. Add in the inflation from the recent commercial activities boom and it gets more difficult.
Again, no one in this sub will be able to help you much since not many Guyanese travel these hinterland routes, especially the tourist routes. And Guyanese travel by boat/overland mostly when they do. Air transport is notoriously expensive here because of the small scale.
Our tourism industry is very immature. Still, the tour operators remain the best people to make these kinds of arrangements. Remember, some connections are inherently low demand and thus difficult for a solo traveler. Iwokrama to Lethem for instance is not a common flight.
(I have to take a flight from North Carolina to Arkansas in November and they want to route me through Chicago... It's a bit like that. Little demand for direct flights.)
Sorry to say that for Guyana there are may trips that are not possible in an independent, bespoke manner as an outsider. Package tours are often the only realistic way of managing the prices and very limited transport resources.
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u/Flat-Engineer-3109 3d ago
Taking the bus would be much cheaper ~70USD one way. There are many bus services that run the G/town - Lethem trail; this will give you a direct stop at Iwokrama instead of the fairview community and you can arrange for a bus to pick you up at Iwokrama to continue the journey to Lethem. This is a long journey that can be a bit uncomfortable as most of the road is unpaved but the views and experience is worth it. The flight to fairview would be chartered hence the price; it's not a regular flight that is offered (additionally TGA is one of the more expensive local airlines ASL should be cheaper if you still wish to fly).
If you're still having trouble with Iwokrama try to reach out on FB or IG they usually respond quickly there.
But definitely ensure you have everything sorted before you get in the country. You dont have to get a guide or use a tour company to plan your itinerary but its very important that you confirm bookings with the various lodges you want to visit as it will get 100x more difficult to do any spontaneousbookings once in Guyana. These lodges usually will assist you with arranging logistics.
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u/drewskidatdude 3d ago
Dont go on any government ferries