Travel: The Inevitable Backpacking Cock-Up, Followed by Redemption

3:40 a.m. on March 10th – My iPhone alarm goes off. It’s harp music. What a joke that is at zero dark thirty in the morning. I dress, then shove the last bits of crap into my backpack in a manner which bears no resemblance to packing.

4:00 a.m. – In front of the guesthouse, I get ready to wait for the shared taxi that’s to pick me up “sometime between 4 and 5 a.m.” in Paramaribo, Suriname and proceed to Georgetown, Guyana. Look, there’s a taxi out front already! Loaded with gear, I run-hobble over. It turns out to be another guest returning from a night out. Drunk, he stumbles into the guesthouse. Deflated, I drop into a chair on the porch.

4:30 a.m. – Of course the taxi’s not going to come in the first half of the hour. They’re going to make me wait. I could have slept until 4.

5:05 a.m. – Still no taxi. This makes me nervous, as the ferry that crosses the Courantyne River between Suriname and Guyana leaves at 9:00 a.m. From what I’ve been able to find out, there’s only one ferry per day.

5:20 a.m. – I call one of six numbers I’ve been given for the taxi company. A sleepy Indian woman answers. “It’s coming, he’s just picking up the other people,” she says, and hangs up. More waiting. Why didn’t I pack a battery-operated single-cup coffee machine, damn it? I make a note to investigate caffeine lozenges when I get home.

5:30 a.m. – The chubby and balding night security guard who’s sitting on the porch with me asks in his sparse English, “What is your name?” I tell him, and he follows with, “How old are you?” Strange second question, I think. “Why?” He says, “Because you have the face of an old woman.” Oh, snap. It’s too early for an insult like that. In an even voice, I pleasantly reply, “F#%k you.” He thinks I’ve said, “Forty.”

5:40 a.m. – I call the taxi company again, and this time a man answers. “You’re at the Twenty4 guesthouse? I told them when they made the reservation, they were supposed to call back last night to confirm. Nobody called.” I start pacing, and silently curse the ditzy front-desk girl who’d been on duty the night before. The man says, “I’ll call the driver.” “Am I going to make the 9 a.m. ferry?” I ask. “I’m calling the driver,” he says impatiently. Click.

6:00 a.m. – Same man answers when I call. Again. “He hasn’t come yet? I’ll give you his phone number. You can call him.” I write down the number, then ask, “Will I make it for the 9 a.m. ferry?” “You call the driver,” he tells me. These guys are good.

6:01 a.m. – The driver’s number rings for a long time before someone picks it up. “Did you get a call about a pick-up at Twenty4 guesthouse?” I ask. “Yeah,” he says. “Well, are you coming? I’m trying to make the 9 a.m. ferry and it’s a three-hour drive to get there, right?” The completely monotone response: “I’ll be there in 20 minutes.” Click.

6:30 a.m. – Still no taxi. The guy who’s working reception at the guesthouse that day arrives, and even though he’s been one of the most competent and helpful employees during my stay, gets an earful regarding the incomplete reservation before he’s even made it to the top of the stairs. “I couldn’t even get back into the guesthouse to go to the bathroom!” I say. “I’m really, really sorry,” he tells me. “Let me get you some yogurt and granola.” “Okay,” I say, and run for the toilet.

6:50 a.m. – Just as I start shoveling the free breakfast down my piehole, the taxi driver arrives. His only passenger is his buddy sleeping in the front seat. By now, I know I’ve missed the ferry. I resolve to go with the flow, and sleep on whichever side of the border I end up on that night. I get in, and we drive a few blocks to the taxi stand in the center of the city. The driver turns the car off.

7:15 a.m. – Three women get out of another waiting taxi and into mine. They are all Guyanese. One’s an older lady, dressed head-to-toe in bright yellow. Another is barely an adult but exudes street-smarts, and the third is her mother. In stretchy stars-and-stripes tank and tights and with a nest of dreadlocks secured high atop her head, the mother bears a resemblance to Florence Griffith-Joyner, but trashier. The bumble bee lady tells me the driver needs two additional passengers before we can even leave. “You’ll take the 1 p.m. ferry,” he says. At least there is a 1 p.m. ferry. I have to ask my travel mates to say everything twice as I can’t understand their Guyanese English Creole.

7:45 a.m. – We set off – yay! But at the gas station down the street, we stop. Rumor has it that someone there is looking for a taxi, but now the parking lot is empty. We return to the taxi stand.

8:15 a.m. – Nescafé out of a thermos from a street shop. Hell, yeah. And we have a fifth passenger, an older fellow in a white baseball cap with a shiny vinyl brim.

8:45 a.m. – The driver, a different guy from the first one, has found a sixth person, a young man in a Che Guevara shirt. I want to tell him I have a t-shirt of Che Guevara wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt. Finally, our car is ready to go. Except that now, Flo-Jo and her daughter have gone shopping. We drive around the streets looking for them before returning to the taxi stand to wait.

9:15 a.m. – The missing passengers return, their arms full of… I don’t know what their arms are full of. “What are those?” I ask, as they get in and stash bags of tubes at their feet. “Posters,” Flo-Jo says, “of singers.” They must be planning to resell them in Guyana. “Oh,” I say, “so do you guys know Don Boy? He was my Amazon jungle guide, and he has two CDs.” “No,” they both say, “these are posters of other singers.” They proceed to name five or six; Bob Marley is the only name I recognize but I nod and play it cool. Next, the conversation turns to first-hand accounts of road fatalities, and how in Suriname, if you get in a car wreck, the authorities leave you for dead. This makes Flo-Jo very angry. She talks so fast and furiously that her eyes turn crazy, and I think, “She could mess you up if she didn’t like you.” Car wrecks are handled differently in Guyana, they all tell me. There, they have free healthcare, so the ambulance will pick you up. But we’re still in Suriname.

9:30 a.m. – After clearing city traffic, we’re really, truly on our way. And running late for the 1 p.m. ferry. I peer over two rows of shoulders and read 150 kilometers an hour on the speedometer. “Is he driving this fast because we’re late?” I ask Alfred, the older man next to me (I know his name because he’s already shown me his travel documents, at which point, I showed him mine, to keep it even). “No,” he says, “they always drive like this.”

12:45 p.m. – We arrive at the ferry with 15 minutes to spare. Flo-Jo, her daughter and the bumble bee hit the duty free shop to buy booze. By now, we’ve all become pals. Alfred and I help carry the bumble bee’s bags and Flo-Jo conspiratorially advises me on good places to convert my remaining Suriname dollars. She’s finally taken off the quilted red bomber jacket with the fur-trimmed hood that she wore throughout the morning despite the 94 degree temperature. I tap her toned bicep and tell her what I’ve dubbed her. She finds this hilarious, and agrees.

1:30 p.m. – On the other side of the river, we get a Guyanese taxi driver. He is huge, and a taqiyah – the crocheted headpiece of Muslim men – sits on his head. “You are five?” he asks. “No six,” I say, then notice we’ve lost the young man. “He’s gone the back route,” Alfred says, referring to the small boats that illegally carry people between the two countries. “He probably didn’t have valid travel documents like us.” A new woman joins us to take the sixth spot, and this time, the bumble bee sits in the back of the taxi with me. She wants to have a nap before she gets to her daughter’s house.

2:00 p.m. – The taxi driver puts on a CD. Love songs. And he sings along. Soon, we’re all singing, except for Alfred and the new lady. Even the bumble bee wakes up to sing. Tracks include Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” Dolly Parton and Kenny Roger’s “Islands in the Stream,” Gino Vanelli’s “Hurts to Be in Love,” Heart’s “All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You,” and the ultimate group sing-along-in-a-foreign-country song, Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Of this, I have video. At this point, we’re in Georgetown, dodging cows on the road as we head to the bumble bee’s daughter’s house, where we’re to drop her first. The new lady is next, then Alfred, then me. “Bye! Safe travels!” Flo-Jo and her daughter call out as I hoist my backpack onto my shoulders outside the Tropicana Hotel. Completely liberated from my earlier frustration at having to sit and wait for four-and-a-half hours, I feel like I’ve just come back from a strange but wonderful summer camp.