Postscript to Iwokrama

The bus ride on Intraserv (a line that services Georgetown all the way down to Brazil) takes, on a good day, nine hours to get to the Kurupukari river crossing. We took almost 12 hours going to Iwokrama, but the way back was pure torture that lasted 19 hours.

The driver that took over the route from Kurupukari to Georgetown was a brusque, unrefined road warrior whose strategy for dealing with all obstacles on the road--be it tree branch, gigantic pothole (it's only dirt road from Lethem all the way to Linden, which means we only get pavement for about an hour and a half in total), or mud--is to drive as fast as he could over it. A contrast to the careful, skillful driving of the bus driver before him.

Which means that we inevitably found ourselves stuck after a while. The driver's response, of course, was to press on the accelarator and spin the wheels. The result, predictably, was to dig in the wheel a lot more. We all got up out of the bus to hang out by the side of the road while the other driver went for help. All of us except Cookee, who lay curled up asleep in the bus. When the passengers got tired of waiting around, the men all got together and decided to push the bus. That didn't work.

And then--brilliant idea! While the men pushed, the women and children were requested to go to the side opposite the stuck wheel. The children clapped and chanted something in Brazilian (something along the lines of, I am guessing, One, two, three, go!), as the men pushed. Still no go.

And that's when I went over and woke up Cookee, who was alone on the left, stuck side of the bus. She grumbled, walked sleepily over to the other side, and frowned at everyone. One more push from the boys, and then--hooray! We were saved! It was Cookee's ginormous weight that was holding us down all that time. But it's okay. Happy ending!