My purpose for this trip was to do the three Guyana’s before going to Europe. I took a quick flight from Trinidad, and met someone on the plane who was nice enough to drive me to my hotel, the Cara Lodge. The Cara Lodge is the best hotel in Georgetown besides the Marriott, and has had many famous guests over the years.
This is not my picture, fyi.
It was New Years’ day, and the hotel advised me that it was perfectly safe to go out and about, I was comforted to hear this, but took serious precautions anyways…I wore a very discreet money belt, only took one credit card, no wallet, no watch, and only $20 cash. I dressed down to not stand out in the crowd…but it happened, I was robbed at gunpoint.
The “downtown” was a ten minute walk from the hotel. Since it was New Year’s day, there was no one on the streets. I could immediately tell the city was very poor, worse than anything I had ever seen before. Rats running in the streets, homeless people washing their clothes in sewers, buildings on the verge of collapse. The city hall itself seemed abandoned, broken windows, rotting wood, a real nightmare. I took my phone out to take a picture of this…and that is where I had a strange feeling, I was being watched. I was then approached by two men on a bike who asked me for the time, knowing this was a ruse to see (and take) my phone, I told them I didn’t know…but it was too late. As soon as I looked into their eyes, I knew exactly what would happen to me next.
My options were limited, the police station was a couple minutes away in a bad neighborhood, and the hotel was ten to fifteen minutes away…there was no one in the street that could assist me, all the shops were closed, and all apartments had bars on the windows and tall gates with barbed wire to prevent access. I thought I would probably get killed trying to get to the police station, so I attempted to get back to the hotel.
This is the only nice part of the city, and the only picture I uploaded before my phone got stolen!
I could see the two men circling around on their bike, keeping even if I had made it to the police station, what would I say? I think I might be followed and I want to be driven back to my hotel?!? Nothing had happened yet, and maybe I was just being paranoid after all, but no. I walked less than five minutes before I heard tires screech behind me, going against all advice for someone in this situation, I ran…Why would I give my stuff without even trying to get away?!? The men just got back on their bike to chase me down, one jumped off, grabbed me by my shirt and said: “do that again and we’ll kill you”…In the meantime, I had slipped my credit card behind my belt, and turned my pockets. They then instructed me to look the other way while they made their escape…I didn’t listen. I then found someone who looked relatively wealthy, and asked them to walk me to the police station…the police station was in such bad condition I had to ask if I was in the right place.
I was asked to sit on a bench that was stained, probably by some unknown bodily fluids, the operators were drinking beer and watching TV, and there was a poster on the wall depicting what could happen to your body if you were infected with various diseases…I really didn’t want to sit on that bench…the interrogation room had walls so thin you could probably break you way to freedom rather easily. It took 25 minutes to get a car to the police station…scary. Two officers took me around the city to try and find the people who robbed me, people looking at me through the front window were very agitated, angrily telling us to get out of their neighborhoods. The police officers told me: “You were targeted because of your complexion”. I felt a lot of hatred coming from the people, and it was a very interesting experience overall. I was brought to a market where the perpetrators were most likely “spending my money”…and I had three police officers to protect me. The people looked angry at me for a reason I have yet to identify, was it really because I’m a Westerner? I never experienced this elsewhere in South or Central America. On top of this, all day trips to Kaieteur falls were cancelled for the rest of my stay due to bad weather.
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