The Guianas: The Great Unknown
Lonely Planet author & SAE Quito Co-Manager Aimee Dowl takes us on a journey to three South American countries that seem a world away from the rest of the continent.
The Guianas are one of those geographically challenged regions of the world. Even perfectly well-educated people ask, are they in Africa? South-east Asia? The Caribbean? But when people find out that the Guianas are those three little countries – Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana – nestled in the northeastern corner of South America, they invariably want to know more.
What’s there? What language do they speak? Why go?
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Consisting of a former British colony, a former Dutch colony, and a region that is technically an overseas department of France (and therefore a member of the EU) the Guianas actually have a lot to do with Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. More than three quarters of the roughly one million people who live there are descendents of African slaves and indentured laborers from India, Indonesia, and China. Add to this melting pot, indigenous Amerindian peoples, old European families and recent immigrants from the Caribbean, Israel, Lebanon, Laos and Vietnam, and you have the richest ethnic stew in South America.
The tension that might be expected to exist between so many different cultures ranges from none to pretty high, depending on who you talk to. The harmony between religious groups is evident in the placement of mosques, synagogues and temples within a stone’s throw of each other, but no one’s throwing any stones. Still, political allegiances in all three of the Guianas generally form along ethnic lines. Intermarriage between the major groups is rare.
Each country officially uses the language of its former colonizer, but many others are widely spoken: Hindi, Indonesian, Mandarin, Arawak and especially in Suriname, a lingua franca called Sranan Tongo (or taki taki by locals) that takes words from European and African languages. The cuisine is no less eclectic, consisting of Indonesan warungs, Indian roti shops, Chinese dumpling houses and Creole joints.
The street food scene, thriving in every urban nook and cranny, dishes up an inexpensive smorgasbord of snacks and fast meals.
If the cities are centers of cultural diversity, then the coast and interior are the centers of biological diversity, which blooms wildly in some of the largest areas of protected beach, rainforest and savannah in the world. Vast reaches of protected habitat offer the opportunity to see such magnificent creatures as toucans, anteaters, jaguars, river otters, and anaconda. Bird-watching and sport fishing are top notch with more than eight hundred avian species and the world’s biggest freshwater fish. All three countries’ coastlines welcome thousands of sea turtles every mating season, a period from April to September when the armored amphibians trudge ashore to lay their eggs in the sand, offering a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with highly endangered wildlife.
The absolute must of any trip to this is region is Guyana’s Kaieteur Falls, the highest single-drop waterfall in the world at 731 feet. It is one of South America’s most thrilling natural wonders, yet delightfully void of touristy crowds. Most visitors fly there in small planes. Banking sharply over the falls and the huge Guiana Shield (a geological formation some three billion years old and covered in primary rainforest), this flight is guaranteed to be one of the most dramatic and stunning views of any traveler’s life.
Despite all this cultural and natural richness, for many years the Guianas weren’t exactly a hot tourist destination.
Both Guyana and Suriname have experienced economic and political turmoil since their independence in 1966 and 1975 respectively (as well as a violent uprising in Suriname during the late 1980s) and although French Guiana enjoys a much greater wealth than its neighbors, it has tended to stagnate as a distant child of its mother country, France.
The signs of these troubles, however, are starting to give way to the improvements of a brighter era. Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been restored to a center of gingerbread Dutch colonial buildings, and Guyana continues to invest in ecotourism as an alternative to oil drilling and gold mining in its rainforests. French Guiana’s economy has been reinvigorated by the wealth of jobs associated with the Guianese Space Center, which launches some 17% of the world satellites (visitors can watch a blast off about a dozen times throughout the year).
It’s likely that the Guianas will remain under the radar for a while, but that’s the best part. Visitors can enjoy mild levels of tourism while exploring a thoroughly unexpected cultural and natural gem. If you want to keep it a secret, tell you’re friends it’s in Africa.
Aimée Dowl is co-author of Lonely Planet’s Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands, and she wrote the Guianas chapter of Lonely Planet’s South America on a Shoestring . She lives in Quito and has recently become Co-Manager of the SAE Quito Clubhouse. She blogs about Ecuador at www.coolcoper.com and see more of her work at www.aimeedowl.com
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