Hello again from Guyana!

It's now been just over a week since we arrived at rockview and things have been going well. Rockview Lodge is, as I might have already said, like an Oasis in the middle of the rupununi, the savanah region of Guyana. It is home to wild cats, kiskadee birds and the impressive Harpy Eagles - which are huge! We're working for Colin Edwards, a British expat who built roads here as a VSO (voluntary service overseas) and has stayed on to build this lodge. He has planted all kinds of vegetables, grown fruit trees, bought and raised cattle and even has horses. The lodge is 100% geared towards tourists but there is also a shop and a road station about a km away which supply the local neighbourhood with anything from rice to cigarettes. As well as this Colin's staff also crack cashew's for the tourists (after roasting them) and not only sell cashews but also use them to make a cashew nut butter, which is brilliant at breakfast! All this and he has a swimming pool - Bernadette and I don't feel like travellers at all! We've been working on his library, cataloguing his book collection and re-shelving them for the tourists to use, and also designing some stables for his horses and trying to implement some kind of order to the horse-keeping here. In fact this morning we went on a long trek across the savannah to a river which was brilliant - bar us both getting burnt to a crisp! My horse - brownboy - was excellent and infinitely better than Pamela (yes i've been doing the Borat voice) who I rode last time and I was kicking like Eric Cantona because she just wouldn't move. Brownboy is, as you may have guessed, brown and male, but also he's very skinny. All of the horses are working horses so they're looking at ways to rear them so that they can carry all kinds of tourists. I'm a little sore after the trek, but it was worth it because I had my first Canter today! Admittedly it wasn't my idea, but brownboy was good with me, and so on the way back i urged him into a canter with a quick nudge with my shoe and we went off with the wind blowing in our faces. It was quite an experience!

The savannah itself is dotted with clumps of trees and tiny Amerindian settlements. Rockview is based in Annai where there is a research institute and a secondary school. Bernadette and I have got to know the volunteers and the researchers really well which has been fun. We went to a party with them the day after we arrived and had a great time, dancing and drinking rum and meeting loads of their local friends. Last night (full moon) we walked the three miles up to the school and cooked pizzas with them, we made them from scratch and they tasted AMAZING! Then we sat around the fire and listened to Jack Johnson and stories about their teaching experiences. Grace is 17 (18 on wednesday), Kirsty is 18 (both from Scotland and with Project Trust), Daniel is in his 20's, Jess is 22, Heather is 25 I think and Lily is 25 as well (her boyfriend Clay is a researcher and is a great drinking buddy. Colin doesn't mind us heading up there so we've seen them quite a bit this week, though next week they're heading to Rodeo in Lethem. That said there's some Valentine's bash on the 14th that we might stay for so we can say goodbye.

Here at work we have a few characters as well! There's Shonette who is the second in command, 19 and two-weeks off giving birth. Josephine(a) who's twenty and defaced my chad's bar shirt with jibberish the other day. Jorge, Colin's eldest son who seems to do everything practical around here. Alma, who run's the shop. Candici, who works in the shop and somehow found the filthiest book we catalogued and was reading it behind her desk. Vitor, Colin's 13 year old son who drives me around on his bike and plays Uno with us. Aunty Velda, Colin's third wife, and domino's fanatic. And finally Sophie, Jorge's baby daughter who is two and now can say Bernadette and Mark. She sees us, we hide, and then she runs and finds us giggling. She's amazing fun and very cool to have around, despite the fact that she kisses my head and Bernie's sunburn! I shall have to put pictures up soon! (Sorry for not putting more up, but it takes ages on this computer so i chose three random ones. The one above is the view from the third platform of the canopy walkway. We saw Parakeets and woodpeckers on the tree which you can see a piece of on the far left, and through the clearning we saw a couple of Toucans and some Parrots!)

What also makes this place interesting is the guests. Colin has been busy since we arrived so we've met most of them. We've met two dutch taxidermists who were just brilliant fun if not a little strange, a group made up of two couples who always travel together, and one recent divorcee who was stretching her boundaries, the President's wife - who is not only gorgeous but incredibly bright and originates from Peckham, and an American couple from Seattle who've just left along with a couple from Surrey. Every night Colin puts on an Enya cd (I got him to play Sigur Ros the other night though and he liked it!), and we have rum and lime, cashews, cheese, and calibresi (a spicey sausage used in cutters - which is sausaged cut up with onions etc) for the meat eaters. It's brilliant! This morning we had breakfast with the Iwokrama board, which includes Edward and Audrey Glover, a frightfully well-spoken couple who live out here. Edward used to be the High Comissioner so he was keen to hear what we thought about the country.

Anyway, all this detail is probably boring whoever is reading this (Beccy G and Catriona are used to it I think!) so i'll end with my highlights from Rockview so far. A few days in I went to the Oasis (the roadside stop-off) and walking back with Bernie and Vitor we spotted some locals playing cricket. Five minutes later and I was walking in with the bowler, and even having a bowl - they were all yorkers for some reason. The sun was setting, I'd picked off a couple of the kids and caught one of the guys and it was just an amazing feeling. The sunsets here are just unbelievable, it sets behind some hills and it almost looks like they're ablaze the sky goes so orange. Today's was brilliant as well, we've been so lucky here! I've yet to get up for sunrise but my room has no door or windows so the house-windows just let the light in and wake me up everyday at about 7:30, again it's an amazing thing to experience. But perhaps the most interesting thing is the walk up to the school. It took us about 40 minutes the first time, but last night it was a full moon and it hadn't risen when we set out. The sky was filled with stars and some of the locals had left a long long line of fire clearing some bush to scare off snakes and to slow growth. We walked along the sandy road towards the school and right up to the fire and just watched it crackle for as far as we could see in one thin line. The smoke just drifted off into the sky and up to the stars, it was definately an experience!

Anyway, I need to go to bed because we're heading back to the books tomorrow for the final stage, and I need to retrieve the copies of Massage Parlour, Massage Parlour II, Her (by Anonymous, the sequel to "Him" and Dr Mirian Stoppard's guide to birth before we hand in our final list! We've also lost my favourite book - When there is no Doctor - a guide to easy healthcare. One of the chapters deals with worms, and below a depiction of a boy with no trousers and his hand on his bottom with his other hand stretched out to another boy offering him a biscuit it says "Tommy's Mom thought that he had worms because he ate too many sweets, but no it was because he ate feces (in brackets it adds: "s***"). You just can't make it up! Also we're meeting Joanna, our third musketeer tomorrow. She is currently on the overnight bus from Georgetown and begins her six weeks with us tomorrow. More on Rockview, the horses, Joanna and of course the books, next time!