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Tour Overview
This is where Sir Walter Raleigh searched for El Dorado, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle dreamt up the stories of “The Lost World.” In some of the most pristine and untouched primary jungle in the world, you will learn how to survive from just what is around you and then you will have the chance to put your skills to the test!
Initial jungle training and acclimatisation will take place in a local Makushi Amerindian village. Here we get you comfortable with the jungle. After just a few days we will move deeper into the jungle by dug out canoes, where we will begin the real fun work of survival training. Within the stunning Pakaraima Mountains, covered in jungle and criss-crossed by rivers, the Bushmasters ex UK Special Forces Survival Instructor and local Amerindian hunters from the Makushi tribe will take you through all you will need to know to survive. We concentrate on things that work, not that look fancy. This is the real stuff, the way the Makushi Amerindians have done it for thousands of years.
You will learn how to find water, make traps, hunt with bow and arrow, set a fire without a match or lighter, build a shelter, leave signs for rescuers and if all else fails, find your own way out of the jungle!
After having gone through these basics comes the reality. For several days on your own or in pairs you will be placed in a simulated survival situation, though Bushmasters staff will be monitoring you throughout, purely for safety reasons. Wit just a machete, water bottle and survival kit you have to put into practice the skills you have learnt. There will be survival tasks to complete each day. We call this isolation, where there is not only the practical problems of daily existence to cope with, but also the psychological difficulties of not having those modern luxuries, of being in a strange environment, of little human contact, of lack of sleep………….can you cope?
Our Guides come from the biologically diverse and unique Rupununi, the majority being from the Makushi people. Individuals may differ from trip to trip for, as well as working for Bushmasters, they also have farms, families, and houses to look after. All of them are amazing in the jungle and savannah. They have an uncanny ability to know exactly where they are, how to get somewhere and find their way back again, even in completely unexplored territory (which is not uncommon with Bushmasters). Finding food from the forest, medicines, water, catching fish, all this is second nature to them... just like going to the pub for us!
Charlo Melville is a legend within the Rupununi. His family arrived from Europe generations ago and built the largest cattle ranch on earth, Dadanawa. Charlo now owns a number of smaller ranches and keeps the spirit of the Rupununi ranch alive today at Konaiki-kizai; his 60 square mile ranch in the south savannahs of Guyana. Charlo is an amazing artist and handcrafts beautiful products from leather, including the machete sheaths used on our survival courses and the saddles used on our horseback trips. He does the whole thing, from culling the cow to curing the leather to engraving the artwork into the finished article.
Harold Captain is an absolute star. There is nothing Harold does not know. He is the senior jungle man in his area and commands the respect of everyone. All ask for Harold's advice if they have any sense. He's known as 'The Jaguar' within the village because of the time he's spent in the jungle (over half a century now). Not that these few years have slowed him any! He's tougher, stronger, fitter and better than anyone at pretty much everything, from living in the jungle to drinking ale!
Ian Craddock was a British Army officer who served in the Infantry and Special Forces for 10 years. He first moved to Guyana in 2002 organising jungle expeditions for a British conservation charity. Ian has completed a variety of specialist courses from Combat Survival Instructor to Military Mountaineering and Climbing instructor. He has taken part in exercises and operations in a host of countries around the world from the Gulf to the Falkland Islands, from North America to the Indian Himalayas - where he jointly led a joint Anglo-Indian team on the first successful ascent of Mt Tingchen Khan. He did spend a couple of years trying to do the city life in London, but got dragged back to the outdoors quite easily! Each year Ian spends about 50% of his time in the jungle. The other 50% is spent planning how to get back in.
Lionel James is from Surama and one of our more experienced guides in the jungle. Amongst a host of other huge trips he's also undertaken expeditions from Guyana crossing over into Brazil and Venezuela. Get a map and see for yourself how far that is, especially on foot through dense jungle! He is a great character and has lots of stories, which he's happy to tell you!
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Tour Highlights
Survival training with the experts
Itinerary
Saturday
Meet up day. Please plan your arrival flight so as to be available to meet with the rest of the course members today. We will arrange an exact time and venue to meet in Georgetown closer to the date, as there are a variety of flights with different arrival times into Guyana that people may wish to take. Bushmasters staff will be on hand to take you to a local hotel.
Accommodation will be in a local hotel with en-suite shared rooms. Whilst in Georgetown meals are not included. We’ll suggest a number of places to eat, ranging from hotel restaurants, smart coffee shops to basic but plentiful Brazilian BBQ’s.
Sunday
Today you have chance for a lie in and to get over your long flight. In the afternoon we will meet up and go through some basic lessons and briefings for the coming survival adventure.
Accommodation is provided in shared en-suite hotel rooms and once again meals are not included – giving you the freedom to explore Georgetown.
Monday
Travel into the interior is by light aircraft or 4x4 Land Cruiser type vehicles. The time of year and weight of the rains dictate which method we take. If we go by Cruiser it will be late on the Sunday and we’ll travel overnight.
If by aircraft we’ll leave early on the Monday morning for the journey deep into the interior.
Here we load into 4x4 vehicles for the hour long drive to an Amerindian village. Here you’ll stay in the village eco-lodge and we’ll spend the day organizing all our gear for the coming jungle adventure.
On arrival in the village we’ll check you have all the right equipment for the jungle, plus show you how to use most of it and more importantly pack it so it stays dry.
We’ll also go through some basic lessons about the jungle, the type of things to expect and even introduce you to some of the local inhabitants – not the human kind either.
The Savannah is an amazing place, more like the plains of Africa with great mountains in the distance. Every rainy season it becomes flooded with waters from the Amazon and other great rivers. This is where Sir Walter Raleigh searched for El Dorado and home to some amazing creatures like Puma, Giant Anteater, Jabiru Stork and Capybara, the largest rodent in the World.
Accommodation is in the community eco- lodge, in shared benabs with basic facilities. All meals cooked by local staff at the lodge and served in the central benab.
Tuesday
After a restful nights sleep, we’ll go through some basic jungle training and also ensure we have all the kit for the coming days deep in the forest.
Accommodation is in the community eco- lodge, in shared benabs with basic facilities. All meals cooked by local staff at the lodge
We will take you through some important areas including:
- First Aid - The jungle environment including the wildlife you might come across - Keeping healthy, fit and avoiding heat injuries - Packing kit so it is comfortable and waterproof
and served in the central benab.
Wed-Mon
Over the coming days we will go through all the main skills of survival in the jungle. These fall into a series of main headings:
- Psychological - Water - Shelter - Food - Fire
Throughout accommodation is a hammock in the jungle, with meals cooked by you.
Tue-Wed
The training is over. Today you leave all your comforts behind you and head off on your own or with a buddy to your very own stretch of jungle to survive in.
With just your belt kit and recently learnt knowledge to help you, you will be given a series of tasks to complete, in order to survive and make yourself as comfortable as you can.
You will make your own shelter, fire, heater, mosquito repellent, scavenge and hunt food, find water and make ways to show the outside world and rescue parties where you are.
This is not just about sitting around and waiting for help, because it is not coming. You have to work at it and you will be exhausted both physically and mentally.
Accommodation and food is what you make/ provide for your self!!
During this phase you are in a base camp with basic facilities. Most days however, we will be out in the jungle or along the rivers.
Thursday
At last there is light at the end of the tunnel. A local rescue team finds you. We leave the jungle behind and head out into a local Amerindian community, where we can wash off the trail, eat some fresh food, drink a few beers and swap stories of the last few weeks.
Meals and accommodation in the community eco lodge, which has basic facilities.
Friday
Today we will fly you to Kaieteur Falls. This is the tallest single drop waterfall in the World, five time higher than Niagara Falls. It is completely on its own in the jungle with virtually no man-made infrastructure around it.
The falls are an amazing sight. You truly have to see Kaieteur if you visit Guyana. As well as fly bys in the light aircraft, the plane will land nearby and a local guide will take you around the different vantage points and explain areas of interest.
It is simple walking this time, water bottle and cameras only! You will see the tiny Golden Frog which lives in the Giant Bromeliads at the top of the falls, each one 160 times more potent than Cocaine. You may also get chance to see the rare ‘Cock of the Rock’ bird, the male of which is bright orange in colour. And of course there will be plenty of chances to see the Falls from different places, including up close; close enough to touch the water even.
After Kaieteur we fly on to Georgetown where you’ll spend your last night in the same hotel from the first night of the trip. We’ll head out for a big final dinner and beers, before people start making their way home the next day.
Breakfast is the last meal of the course provided by Bushmasters.
Saturday
Departure day. Please arrange your return flight for any time from Saturday morning.
Our Trusted Partner's Responsible and Sustainable Travel Policy
Bushmasters also aims to provide a rewarding future for young Guyanese people in the guiding industry. Many young people go off to the mines or to work in Brazil as there is little to offer them at home. Bushmasters aims to run training courses for these young people every year and also to finance young guides on our trips. On a trip you may see the two senior guides, but also an additional younger guide who is being mentored by the others and funded by Bushmasters to take part in these trips and learn all the weird, strange things that us foreigners bring to the party. It is very much a fair partnership between the local people and Bushmasters.
Bushmasters is also keen to support conservation and community development within Guyana. Man is destroying many of the world's amazing places and it is only man that can save them. Unfortunately in this day and age that means giving everything a financial value. Rarely do people do the right thing just because it is the right thing, especially big companies. To them the jungle is a commodity; the lumber, medicinal products, animals, clearing the land for soya crops and so on, all have a massive value. Each year something like $26 billion is made from the jungle in the private sector. Conservation projects have only a few hundred million dollars to protect it each year; there is no way they are going to win in the long run with those odds.
Therefore, the jungle needs a value, which will keep the profit seekers happy without chopping it down. It needs to be sustainable. There are sustainable logging practices, animal extraction, fishing projects and so on around the world. They are not the norm as yet and their effectiveness is open to debate, however Bushmasters is interested in one aspect, the benefits from sound eco-tourism. Without the jungle there will be no tourism of this kind, so we have to keep it intact, and help the local people develop in the manner they want to. Too many areas have far too many tourists, where local ways of life have been destroyed, and an amazing array of social ills imported and often the wildlife scared into hiding or worse.
We are very keen to protect the environment where we work whilst at the same time assisting the local communities. We adhere to best practice in this area. There is a great deal of pressure to log, mine for gold or diamonds or export wild animals from the rainforest and with Guyana becoming better known, these pressures are increasing. There are a number of logging operations and a fair amount of illegal hunting and wildlife capture. A Scarlet Macaw is worth thousands of Dollars in the US, but will be bought for just a few dollars from the local guy who captures it here in the wild. This is inevitable as Western influences encroach in these environments; it is often the only way the local people can improve their lot, get better health care, better education and everything else that we take for granted. It is then a little hypocritical to ask them not to exploit their lands, just as we have for hundreds of years, and to give no alternative to allow their lifestyles to improve.
Tourism like Bushmasters is a way to allow the local people to gain an additional income from their lands without destroying them. We use local guides and the resources of the local communities, from their eco lodges, to boats to the mosquito nets that are made by women from the Amerindian villages.
In all, Bushmasters works with local communities, adheres to and believes in, sound environmental and sustainable tourism practices.
About our Trusted Partner
The idea behind Bushmasters was many years in the planning, most of those spent in the jungles of Central or South America. The rainforest environment is so amazing and yet so few people really get the chance to see the jungle up close outside the normal tourist traps. Very few people also get the opportunity to take part in challenging and exciting trips to places that few, if any, westerners have ever been before. No matter how amazing 'Machu Picchu' is for example, you are not really going to get that sense of exploration with the other thousand or so people there.
Over the years here we have expanded to include trips into the savannahs either by 4x4 or on horseback, including trips to the ranches working as true vaqueros (cowboys) as they have here for hundreds of years.
We wanted to continue the same ethos of true adventure, where you do the work and expand this into other environments. We are looking at trips to the Sahara, Himalaya and Arabia from late 2010 onwards.
Bushmasters was formed to give a more exciting, extreme, and remote experience. Be warned, it is not intended for people who want to waltz into the jungle with a host of porters carrying all their gear, lighting all their fires, cooking all their food. Unlike most companies, we do not take you on jungle trails that have been cut so wide that you could almost drive a car along them, nor do we take you to luxury jungle lodges with high-speed internet connections and luxury spa treatments. Our trips are completely different, deliberately so. They are designed for people who want fun, adventure and are willing to push themselves.
The idea behind Bushmasters is to bring back the true adventurous spirit for those who are game for the challenge.
This includes:
* Unique experiences and a story to dine out on for life. * Tough, remote and true adventures. * Return to age-old explorer spirit. * The client does the work, not some hired hand. * Conservation of the environment.
Always time for a tarzan swing! : Full Survival at www.NatureandKind.com (THE.NATURAL.CHOICE)
Always time for a tarzan swing!
Bamboo cooking pot : Full Survival at www.NatureandKind.com (THE.NATURAL.CHOICE)
Bamboo cooking pot
Basha set up, your sleeping system whilst in the jungle : Full Survival at www.NatureandKind.com (THE.NATURAL.CHOICE)
Basha set up, your sleeping system whilst in the jungle
Electric eel caught on a fishing trip : Full Survival at www.NatureandKind.com (THE.NATURAL.CHOICE)
Electric eel caught on a fishing trip
The traditional mode of transport - dug out canoe : Full Survival at www.NatureandKind.com (THE.NATURAL.CHOICE)
The traditional mode of transport - dug out canoe
Poison dart frog : Full Survival at www.NatureandKind.com (THE.NATURAL.CHOICE)
Poison dart frog
Roasting pirahna for dinner : Full Survival at www.NatureandKind.com (THE.NATURAL.CHOICE)
Roasting pirahna for dinner
Friction fire techniques : Full Survival at www.NatureandKind.com (THE.NATURAL.CHOICE)
Friction fire techniques
Hunting arrows : Full Survival at www.NatureandKind.com (THE.NATURAL.CHOICE)
Hunting arrows
Drinking from a water vine : Full Survival at www.NatureandKind.com (THE.NATURAL.CHOICE)
Drinking from a water vine
Kaietur Falls - the single highest drop in the world : Full Survival at www.NatureandKind.com (THE.NATURAL.CHOICE)
Kaietur Falls - the single highest drop in the world
Smoke signals : Full Survival at www.NatureandKind.com (THE.NATURAL.CHOICE)
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