This is the viewpoint at the top of Turtle Mountain, in the Iwokrama reserve in central Guyana (that's me in the foreground, trying not to look hot).
There are some fabulous stories about how this place was created and how it got name (tales that even include a giant worm). But the myth is almost nothing compared to the peculiarity of life up here.
This is the viewpoint at the top of Turtle Mountain, in the Iwokrama reserve in central Guyana (that's me in the foreground, trying not to look hot).
There are some fabulous stories about how this place was created and how it got name (tales that even include a giant worm). But the myth is almost nothing compared to the peculiarity of life up here.
On our climb up this hill, my Amerindian guide and I were soon surrounded by giant amber crabs and vines as fat and smooth as trans-Atlantic cables. Meanwhile, up in the canopy, there were balls of mud, assembled by the ants, the size of a sofa. We could also make out troupes of monkeys, way above, trickling through the sunbeams. Everything here seemed to cackle and scream. I asked my guide what he used to hunt, and he told me racoons, squirrel monkeys and porcupines. But those, of course, were not the words he used. Instead, he reverted to the old, bosky language of the hunter: ‘Sakiwinkis, crab dogs and pimpla hogs.’
