Atlantic Rising has been playing at being cowboys on a spectacular ranch in southern Guyana called Dadanawa. It was once the largest cattle ranch in the world and to get there you have to drive for about 50 miles on pretty bad roads. We were guided from Lethem by Trevor who works at the ranch. He insisted on stopping at every roadside shop along the route for a beer or three. By the time we got to the last and most tricky part of the road I was the only person sober enough to be anywhere near a wheel – much to Trevor’s disappointment as he was clearly very nervous of my driving.
We lurched through massive puddles and avoided huge holes in the road and eventually arrived at a river. There was a precarious wooden raft floating on barrels, which is used to bring farm vehicles across, but we decided to leave the Land Rover and take a small boat.
The ranch itself was well worth the journey. It is stunningly beautiful open country populated with cows, horses and friendly people who drink rum like it’s water. They generously put us up in their fantastic guesthouse for a couple of days.
We were introduced to Trevor’s pet a very sweet baby armadillo called Woody, who we took swimming for the first time in his life. Tim got to fulfill his fantasy of being a cowboy and Will learnt how to shoot a bow and arrow like an Amarindian. Although I admit this doesn’t look like an effective technique, I managed to lasso a fence post. None of us, however much we practice these skills, will ever be a patch on the real life cowboys, and they are boys – mostly teenagers, who are incredibly cool.
The day we left the ranch this pair swum their horses across the river, saddled up and wearing flip-flops and chaps, rode off to round up some cattle at one of the ranch’s outstations.
