December 30, 2006
Day 458
When we got back to Apoera, we met up once again with Germaine. He was feeling a bit better after his malaria relapse. We bought enough food for a few days and ran into Yohan, the Flemish guy who was on our boat when we first came to Apoera. The four of us walked to the edge of town together, where Craig and I were hoping to hitch a ride to the turnoff to Blanche Marie Falls, about fifty K's up the road.
It got really hot around noon, and Yohan and Germaine got sick of waiting with us, so they walked back into town. There were no trees around to provide shade, no wind, and not a cloud in the sky, so the heat seemed impossible to escape from. I pulled out my tent and made a shelter from the sun using the fly by itself, but it was still too hot even to think.
The only road out of Apoera goes all the way to Paramaribo, the capitol, so Craig and I figured there'd be a fair amount of traffic. However, in seven hours of waiting, not one car passed us. We felt quite dejected and walked back into Apoera figuring we'd have to hang out until after New Year's when there'd likely be more traffic. Spending the holiday in the village as opposed to a resort sounded fine, but we'd already been in the area for a week and were ready to leave.
When we got back to Germaine's place, we ran into Yohan again. Craig borrowed his bike for a quick spin around town. Five minutes later, he was back shouting at me to pack my stuff up. He found us a ride to Blanche Marie! A few minutes later, a government truck picked us up and drove us to the turnoff point.
Just off the main road was a shack where a drunken security guard was staying. He had been cooped up in the shack all alone for two months, and his boss was finally coming to pick him up, so I guess he started celebrating a little early. He showed us a room where we could lock all of our excess gear, so we didn't have to resort to stashing it in the jungle as was our original plan. Shortly thereafter, his boss showed up and took him away, but not before letting off a ton of fireworks. We still had to walk seventeen K's to get to the resort, so we camped early underneath the veranda.
