Don't go near the edge

[S]We are just back from two days at the Kaieteur Falls,a high-volume waterfall on the Potaro River. The drop is about 750 feet, and at the time we were there, there was a lot of water flowing over. The Gorge into which the water falls is surrounded by sheer cliffs and you can walk right to the edge, though there are notices asking you to stay 8 feet frm the edge (because of the 750 foot drop). The spray and patterns of water from the falls are very spectacular.
Swifts nest on a cave behind the wall of water and they fly behind occasionally, and in the evening flock spectacularly overhead and swirl, like the starlings over Brighton beach, before disappearing behind the water in large groups to roost. We could not reach the bottom of the falls (it is totally inaccessible except to climbers with long ropes) but we did some bird and frog watching is the surrounding area. There is a bird there called 'Cock of the Rock' because it makes a nest on rocks, and the male is bright orange. We saw the male bird several times and caught a glimpse of the brown-coloured female whcih is much harder to see.
The area has many large Bromeliads. In the water that collects between the leaves, tiny frogs live (as well as hairy spiders, tiny pink crabs and some sort of beetle. The tiny frogs have a call rather like a ringtone. They are notable as the source of poison for amerindians' blowpipe darts - they contain curare, whch paralises muscles in mammals. The male is golden colour, but is rather shy and hard to glimpse but we did see them as well as the drab brown female.

To get to the falls we took a light aircraft - the outward journey was in a 13-seater, but many seats had been removed for freight (much of it food for the Amerindian village nearby). It was quite fun although a bit scary in a way and we were sitting directly behihnd the pilot.

Comming back the aircraft was even smaller, and we did find on both flights that the noise level made conversation impossible. However we had a spledid view of the forest and the mountains around the waterfall as well as a view of the falls themselves from the air. We passed mining sites where gold and diamonds are found. it is open cast mining and the gold and white sand with pools of water where they pan for the gold made a sharp contrast with the green of the surrounding forests. We crossed mile after mile of rainforest which makes up to 90% of Guyana - stunning to see so many trees and to think of the undisturbed wildlife which flourishes there.

Tomorrow we take another plane back into the interior where we will spend 10 days at various nature reserves.