To kick-start this post, a HUGE thank you to my awesome Instagram followers at @the_adventurous_a for voting on the last poll I put up. Because of you who voted, here is the lineup for the next several posts:
Wet hammock
Travel tips
Collab blog
I have not figured out a time schedule for all of them yet (since some do involve legwork eg rounding up fellow bloggers, research, etc.), but fear not! They will be up eventually.
Onto the story!
This may be one of my favorite Guyana stories to tell, probably because it did not happen to me. The protagonist of this adventurous adventure is no other but fellow Guyana travel buddy Ribz, aka the World's Worst Anchorman!
*virtual applause*
Legend has it that every long trip has at least one bad day. I was not inclined to believe this traveler's folklore, not having had much experience travelling myself. I figured that hey, as long as you plan accordingly, even spontaneous incidents would not dampen the experiences or be considered "bad."
I was wrong.
Let's take this opportunity to travel back in time to November 26th, 2015. This was our last day living in Orealla. We busied ourselves that whole day saying goodbye to our new-found friends, visiting family after family before our boat back to Skeldon left that very evening. It was most definitely bittersweet; when you travel and get to know the friends of any area and congregation, you can't help but become attached to them.
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| Last day in Orealla. Danced in the rain. One for the bucket list |
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| Ribz and the munchkins |
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| My beautiful babies!! |
Now that you have the background setting, fast forward to about 8 pm. All tearful goodbyes said to Tete, Josh and Charlie on the stelling (dock), we boarded our boat, hammocks already strung up for the night ride.
Fortunately, we had a few from the congregation also heading to the city on the same boat, so we felt less lonely. Ribz settled in for the night fairly quickly, while I stayed on the roof with my wonderful hostess Sherine. It was a cooler night than expected, so by around 10 ish we both went down into our hammocks.
This is where it gets better.
Or worse. Depends on who you ask.
At approximately 1 am, I woke up to the startling feeling of being watched. In the dark, I struggled to adjust my vision, only to find Ribz sitting on a nearby rafter, hovering above me. He seemed fidgety and upset, mumbling incoherently to himself. I shrugged it off and fell back asleep.
2 am. The boat jarred rudely.
"Attention, passengers," alerted the captain in his creole-inflected accent. "The tide is too low to keep going, so we will be stopping at this harbor until 7 am. Then we'll continue to the main dock at Skeldon."
Oooooookaaaay, we were not expecting this in the least bit. I was fully awake at this point, and I could tell immediately that Ribz was VERY agitated. This is where his story came out. Enter the Wet Hammock.
There's a rule on these boats that STRICTLY says that NO DRUNK PEOPLE ALLOWED ON DECK. It's painted throughout the rafters and ceiling. However, one inebriated fellow snuck on board and inconveniently set up camp right above my brother's hammock.
IT GETS BETTER/WORSE.
Ribz had wrapped himself partly with the hammock fabric and topped off with his mini travel pillow. Thank goodness he did, because right afterwards, he felt a piddling sensation on top of the pillow. "Must be raining" was his first thought. If only. He woke to find his drunken upstairs neighbor completely emptying his bladder right atop of him and his bedding.
AHHHHHHHHHH!!! WE ARE NOT DONE YET!!!
He is telling me his experience as he's getting off the boat, blindly walking in the general direction of the city. Here we are, dark o clock in the wrong part of town, with a (literally) pissed off brother, no luggage and nowhere to go. I attempted to get him to pause and think about what we should do, but he was understandably in no mood to chitchat. The other friends who were on the boat disembarked at the same time as us, and pulled us from the direction we were heading in. "Don't go there! That's where the drug dealers hang out! Come with us and we'll take you to the hostel instead." I do not want to think about what would have happened had we kept going...
We walked a good half hour or so with the group (at this point, it was Sherine, another sister named Anita, Ribz and myself) to the Amer-Indian hostel, where we had to wait outside for another half hour for a couple of rooms. When we go inside, we see that NONE of the beds have sheets. The landlady proceeds to procure some damp fitted sheets for each bed and nothing else. The three of us ladies spent the next 3 hours or so fending off the giant bloodthirsty city mosquitoes that were buzzing about. Only Ribz, urine soaked, stinky and sleep-deprived, was offensive enough to the pests that they avoided him entirely.
STILL NOT DONE.
Did I mention that we had a very important mission to take care of? Our beloved Josh (
http://nutso42.blogspot.com/) needed his passport and fee to be delivered to the capital via taxi by 6:30 sharp in order to make it to the Georgetown Visa office on time. His extended stay in Guyana depended on it, so it was paramount that my brother and I made it on time to the Skeldon Kingdom Hall to meet up with the taxi driver. The two of us left the hostel and walked about 40 minutes to reach the Hall.
He was late.
Sleepy, peed on, restless, upset, hungry. I can think of a few adjectives we felt at the moment. After some time, he did show up, and the passport was delivered safely and on time.
When we met up with the rest of the group and Ribz had shared his terrible night story with them, he vowed to chuck that hammock in the trash and NEVER use it again. Br. Chacon, a sweet married brother, gently reassured him that the hammock would be usable after a good wash. He then thoroughly cleansed the foul article twice with bleach, all signs of the odorous mess finally gone.
It now swings peacefully in the front of my house, a silent reminder of that night.
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Urine it to win it (badumtss). Hap-pee nonetheless (BADUMTSS)
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It was perhaps our legendary "bad day,", but what a story came out of it! We both laugh heartily in retelling it, and it has served as hilarious conversation fodder in group settings. Like the other adventures we had on that trip, I wouldn't change it for anything.
Well, I hope you guys got a laugh out of this as much as I did writing it. Thank you so much for reading and stay tuned for the next post!
Love,
The Adventurous A.
