Guyanas Layover Speedrun (plus Trinidad & Tobago)
Early this year, while living in Santo Domingo, I decided to visit as much of the East Indies and Guyanas as possible. I ended up taking 21 flight in 16 days and visited all the guyanas, and all of the Lesser Antilles countries except for 2, which I only missed because of InterCaribbean’s error. But we’ll get to that in a later post.
My travels consisted of two journey. The first part would take me to Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, and Trinidad & Tobago. I would have long layover and tour in Georgetown, Guyana, followed by a few days in Paramaribo, Suriname, from where I would take a day trip to French Guiana, and finally have a long layover and self exploration time in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago.
Georgetown, Guyana 🇬🇾
First off was Guyana. This country, while relatively unknown, recently was put on people’s radar as oil had been discovered offshore and in the upcoming years it may develop rapidly due to this oil boom. This does bring with it some issues, as neighboring Venezuela has mentioned a desire to annex parts of Guyana, due to historical disagreements with how the borders were drawn, no doubt an issue coming up because of the recent discovery of oil.
During my layover tour, my guide and driver, while somewhat new to the industry, introduced me to various places, locals, and also drove me to various places I found on the map, before taking me back to the airport.
Paramaribo, Suriname 🇸🇷
Next up was Suriname. I went to Paramaribo, its capital city. Suriname was a Dutch colony and speaks Dutch. It also features very interesting colonial style architecture that, like in Guyana, is vastly different from the rest of South America, and has a more Caribbean feel. Still, it is very multicultural and I saw Hindu temples and Mosques alongside churches.
The almost empty plane from Georgetown, Guyana to Paramaribo, Suriname, after many hours of delay
St. Laurent du Maroni, French Guiana 🇬🇫
While there, I took a day trip across the border to French Guiana, specifically the border town of St. Laurent du Maroni. We took a small boat across the border, which was also ferrying some other tourists who, unlike us, were illegally crossing into the EU (French Guiana is technically just an overseas department of France), as well as some French citizens returning after having illegally crossed into Suriname. They had to get off a bit before their destination though as the police boats came chasing.
My guide also said that until two years ago, he had always taken tourists illegally. We however crossed legally and I got my passport stamped. And so it was that I entered the EU while standing in South America. Funnily enough, while we entered legally, later on we would accidentally illegally enter Suriname as while we drove back, we drove for some time before I asked “so where is the immigration post?” and my guide exclaimed “oh shit!” and turned the car around to drive back. Muscle memory I guess.
Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago 🇹🇹
Finally, I got to Trinidad & Tobago, a long layover where I got an uber-equivalent to the city and explored by myself for a few hours before returning to the airport, driven by a part-time ride-share driver whose fulltime job is a police officer! Overall Port of Spain was kind of sketchy, and the police officer mentioned that he doesn’t even drive through certain neighborhoods. I learned that Angostura Bitters is one of the most famous products of Trinidad, and even got to experience some of its carnival and even had a mini dance-off with another festival goer!
