Saving, and Splurging, in Guyana
Where I come from, we don’t put ice in our Guinness. Or Red Bull. But in the gold-mining frontier town of Bartica, Guyana, I became a (temporary) convert.

By Seth Kugel
Where I come from, we don’t put ice in our Guinness. Or Red Bull. But in the gold-mining frontier town of Bartica, Guyana, I became a (temporary) convert.
Ice-cold beer makes sense in the steamy jungle town, and a little extra alertness can’t hurt in an area where it seems as if half the population is armed.
That revelation was just one of many surprises I found in Guyana, the offbeat first stop on my offbeat route to the World Cup in Brazil. That trip would take me through Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana, en route to Natal, Brazil. It began with the cheapest one-way ticket I could find to South America, a $334 direct flight from New York to Georgetown, the Guyanese capital. Formerly British Guiana, the country of about 725,000 has a complicated colonial legacy and a largely poor population descended from indigenous peoples, African slaves and Indian laborers.
I ended up in Bartica at the suggestion of a woman at a tour operator when I balked at the high price tags of her company’s excursions. Walking around the nearly dead town after sundown on a Sunday was entirely my doing.
Read more at The New York Times.

