One of the longer bus rides I’ve taken was through the jungle from the remote town of Lethem (just on the Guyanese side of the Brazilian border) to the factory town of Linden (a couple of hours inland from the Guyanese capital on the Caribbean coast). The trip must have been close to 16 hours along a pocked dirt road, but for 90% of the distance I don’t remember seeing more than a handful of other vehicles.
During the day, the discomfort of the ride was mitigated by the distraction provided by seeing the rich and varied vegetation as it passed my window. Occasionally I’d see a deer racing for the safety of the underbrush or children spilling out of a ramshackle dwelling but mostly impenetrable, endless, variations of plants. Once night fell the pitch black of the jungle was only punctuated by fires from land being cleared or the rare, shrilling, generator-powered fluorescent light of a roadside shack selling soda, chips, batteries and other “essentials” to who knows whom.
As we drew closer to Linden, the presence of humans became more prominent and the world began to feel hellish. Traffic increased. Harsh lights in empty gas stations illuminated cracked concrete, burning trash, broken beer bottles and pools of mud. In ragged roadside barbecues small clusters of drunken-looking men sat at plastic tables or slumped in the shadows. Having been in a small town surrounded by savannah for more than a week, each stop felt increasingly menacing and I began to worry that my bags might disappear as passengers exited and entered the bus with greater frequency.
At one point when the bus took a 20-minute break, I gathered up all my things and with 20 pounds of luggage hanging off me, went about taking pictures. Perhaps this wasn’t the smartest idea, since removing my valuables from the controlled environment of a bus for the exposure of the street only served to switch the danger of theft to that of robbery, but It was under those circumstances that I took this picture. Thankfully, my foray was ultimately uneventful, and by 3AM I had reached my destination.