Weekend Update with Dawn Olson

Hello!

RobO and I just had an amazingly refreshing weekend, so I thought I would share what we’ve been up to.

Saturday we got awesome news!! Our parents (both sets!) are going to meet us in Isla de Marguarita (an island off the coast of Venezuela) right after we are finished our placement in Guyana! We will be finishing our placement around Easter (April 9th) and plan to say our goodbyes here, then spend a few days in Trinidad and Tobago before meeting our parents on April 21st! It will be a great treat before we start our backpacking adventures in Peru and Ecuador.

On Sunday a few of us went on a day trip to a place called Marudi Creek. Rob and I were itching to get out of the city for at least a day, so we packed a picnic and caught a minibus out to the creek.

Now, just let me explain the concept of the minibus. These are 15 passenger vans that scream around Guyana picking up and dropping off passengers. They are privately owned and there are regular routes that they run, but there are no set stops – you just waive to the bus from the side of the road to pick you up and let the driver know where you’re getting off. Most of them have some sort of ridiculous sound system blaring bad music, and they will honk, weave, essentially do anything to get the most number of passengers the fastest.
The minibuses going to out of town locations will wait at the market until the bus is filled before they will take off. So, one could be waiting any period of time for enough people to fill the bus to get going.

Because there were 6 of us, we filled our minibus really quickly. We were dropped off at the Creek (about 45 mins away when travelling 160kms and weaving in and out of traffic and livestock), and knew that it may be tricky to catch a bus back into town because the buses would all be full driving by. One of our fellow volunteers made a deal with our minibus driver for him to come back to retrieve us with an empty bus at the end of the day. I have to admit, I was extremely skeptical that the driver would come back for us, and was even tempted to get on another bus that came by, but we were pleasantly surprised that our driver kept his word.

Anyway, Marudi Creek was an amazingly relaxing and refreshing place to spend a Sunday. There is a blackwater creek for swimming (black water because of the minerals), table tennis, beach volleyball, and little huts to relax and read in.

Note: I am fully aware that you are interested in hearing how my volunteer work has been going, but have chosen to save those adventures for a later blog. Stay tuned!