Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge (Vintage Departures) Paperback – Illustrated, June 12, 2012

These last a very long time. Don't buy many extras.

Wish I could give this a 4.5 star review, but I can't.This fascinating work isn't quite as interesting or current as was his work on Paraguay (At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig). It certainly has the same wicked sense of humor and wonderful detailed descriptions of so many mundane and fascinating people, places and events...however...so much of the historical perspective is from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Almost more of a "history" book tied to the horrors of slavery and colonialism, by way of ruins and places that can no longer be seen. We often get just the perspective of some dead person from places that are now just overrun by jungle. So much of that which was is now gone and most of what little is left is run down 3rd and 4th world decay and neglect.About the only place that seems "timely" is French Guiana, the shortest part of the book, by way of the penal colony and the film Papillon. As well as the French/EU Space Center. But Surinam is all but about lost places and old events by way of accounts centuries old. And Guyana, a better mix of the old and newer, often comes across in fits and shadows of the absurd and the obscure.Sadly, I never really feel like I understand real people in the cities. So many times even he mentions how little of them he could see or find, as if they disappear into the night or in secret places he isn't allowed to visit. The far more interesting places are usually deep in the jungle, the flora & fauna and indigenous people that make so little sense to us moderns.The maps are welcome and usually, though not always, allow you to find the place he's at in the text. The pictures and drawings are also appreciated, however I do wish he'd have printed more pictures of places in the cities. He forces you to use your imagination for the buildings, parks, and streets of Georgetown, Paramaribo and Cayenne. He took over 1,000 pictures but couldn't give us some of the hotels he stayed at, museums he visited, or streets & parks he wandered?I wanted to love this work like I did Paraguay, but I just came away enjoying it a lot and am glad I'm done, probably never to pick up again or visit. (NOTE: I am going to Paraguay in 2022 for 2 weeks!)

I've been waiting for this one. We've been on John Gimlette's adventures before. He's hauled us along over muddy wartime roads (Panther Soup: Travels Through Europe in War and Peace), through unforgiving territory (Theatre of Fish: Travels Through Newfoundland and Labrador) and into a mysterious country that is not Uruguay (The Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay). Now we're in the Guianas and this time. . . Wow, what a trip!The Wild Coast is not to be taken lightly. But Mr Gimlette is an eternal optimist and is fascinated by residents and boat captains, hangers-on and roomers, wanderers and dangerous characters who tell him their stories, take him to ghastly sites, uncover long-hidden relics or (after considerable soul-searching) decide they cannot talk about what they have seen. Yet despite setbacks and eternal waits in the rain or days wandering down endless rivers that are either "huge and spectacularly violent" or "thin and slinky, carnivorous and black", he never loses his sense of wonder.Mr Gimlette's descriptive powers are boundless. "Lizards held the stage. They were usually tegus--each four feet long--and would spend all day on the lawns, taxiing up and down like little airliners, waiting for their wings. Along one wall of my hut was a beautiful toga, behind which lived a colony of bats." He considers everything worth asking about ("How had [the city of Parmaribo] ended up with square coins and a banknote for 2 1/2 dollars?") or describing ("We were five miles down the Essequibo [River], and half-way up Turtle Mountain. . . .We were now surrounded by giant amber crabs and vines as fat and smooth as transatlantic cables. Meanwhile, up in the canopy, there were balls of mud, assembled by the ants, the size of cars. . . .Everything here seemed to cackle and scream."And we never know what to expect next. We see Jonestown through the eyes of Guyana's residents, including a single soldier's story of the aftermath. We reach Guyana's golden savannahs, something like the Wild West, only . . . wilder. A cattle roundup is done bareback and barefoot by the "ponytails": vaqueros with "long knives, El Greco faces and leather gaiters--they were like some ancient barefoot cavalry". And we keep going through Suriname and French Guiana, up and down treacherous river highways and nearly non-existent roads, in search of whatever is there.Throughout the trip Mr Gimlette makes us acutely aware of the pervasive misery caused by centuries of slavery. It is overarching, omnipresent, shameful, shocking, brutal, immoral and unforgettable. It affected not only its victims--Africans, Amerindians and Javanese--but also their descendants, many of whom (as offspring of runaway slaves) were forced to learn to survive by hiding deep in the forests, far out of sight of even the most insignificant river, some to the present day. This is the Wild Coast we see through Mr Gimlette's eyes, and we are privileged to be along on such a remarkable trip. So put on your boots, take a deep breath, and get on board!

I like this book. Some parts, I love 'em! Yet, it is not a perfect book, and I believe that he author enjoys picturing these lands in a darker way than they really are. I love they way the author describes the cities, the villages, and the land. I love how he creatively depicts all the characters he encounters along the way - a mixture of thieves, scums, workers, politicians that seem to blend all together in these three countries. I also loved the research done by the author before travelling to these countries, telling us a lot about the history and the "why" things are what they are today.Yet, as an anthropologist I feel that sometimes he over-simplistically tries to judge what people do. And he has a negative outlook that makes these people look more like damned souls than normal people. He seems to deny these people the opportunity to be happy and to actually enjoy their lifestyle - perhaps all the people he met had problems?Also, I can see his interest in describing everything negatively from the use of adjectives (dark, ghostly, haunted) that he often uses even for describing the pristine rain forest.But, you know, everyone has his/her biases, and they certainly don't spoil the enjoyment out of what is a welcome addition to the (poor) collection of books on Guayana, Suriname, and French Guyana.If you like travel literature, you will enjoy this book.

The author's subject is the Guyanas - "a land comprising three different countries, three different cultures, three official languages, three currencies, myriad religions." It is a huge task which he has tackled with energy, extensive research and fortitude in the face of many adversities (do not overlook the sodomite snake.)This is part travel book, part history, the two interwoven skilfully and mostly seamlessly. The tribes encountered are of varying degrees of hospitality, the characters are more often villains - or at least on the shady side of what law exists - than saints, but all are worth meeting. The observation is acute and frequently wry - as, for example, in the mutation and intermingling of the importedl and the indigenous populace, "Eventually, all that will be left of them is a string of Scottish spires, and some curious African tribes such as the MacDonalds and the McLeods."The grisly history spares no detail - particularly in the recreation of the bizarre Jonesville mass suicide or the Berbice wars. This is an instructive as well as an entertaining book. In passing, it occurs that the labour involved in its creation will surely have been no less than that undertaken by Dan Brown and his researchers and translators for his latest confection. It would be good to think that the rewards might be comparable but that is not the way of things in these market-led times.

I'm a British descendant of Afro Guyanese parents. just returned from Guyana dealing with deceased families land sale, reading Wild Coast couldn't arrive at a better time.In John Gimlettes fascinating travelogue, I found Gimlette painted a bold picture of the diversity and chequered history of this unknown , unexplored and forgotten region of South America which has allways been overhadowed by the more popular larger Latin regions. Gimlette begins his journey in the area I'm familiar with an area of my past ancestory Guyana , formerly British Guiana. He then travels over the border to Dutch Surinam and his journey concludes in French Guyana , Gimlettes review of his visit from his arrival in the city of weatherbeaten, grand historical wooden Dutch buildings Georgetown , is as fascinating as his trip in to the unchartered interior, rainforests/ jungles of amazing wildlife. The Guyanas history, politics are laced with unforgiveable opression in slavery predominantly from a Dutch domination. John Gimlette opens the door on a unique unknown area of little interest to most of the world an area rich in natural resources, made up predominantly by unexplored rainforest with powerful links to Europe and a diversity of races from India, China, Africa and Europe. Wild Coast is a historical and political trip to this off the beaten track region and a compulsive travel journal as rich as others I have read about Guyana Evelyn Waughs 92 Days and Gerald Durells Three Singles to Adventure.

I have raved here about John Gimlett before: last year, concerning his book on Paraguay, “At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig.”Have now read “Wild Coast – Travels on South America's Untamed Edge”, the result of several months in the three weird and wonderful Guianas: Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.Gimlette is a traveller's traveller with a perspicacious eye and clearly he will talk with anyone. The results of his exhaustive research (“the bibliography is a read in its own right”) are again interspersed with the narration of his own adventures.Unfailingly well-connected in the cities; and then way upcountry, visiting intractable tribes, in a region where casual genocide seems to be traditional. Or upriver, sometimes almost “without a paddle” – he has a commendable aversion to cars.He can be very funny and some of the writing is lush. A sample:”Eventually, at dusk, we reached the Burro-Burro River. It was like streak of blackened glass sliding away, off through the trees. There, high on a bluff, we slung our hammocks, and ate some chunks of catfish. It tasted of trout with an extra dollop of pond. Then we opened some rum, settled in our hammocks, and waited for the show to begin.I had no idea the forest could be so wonderful at night.As the light failed, the airborne eaters receded, and the tweeters began. At first, it was just a flurry of nightjars, and a gentle lullaby of croaks. Then came the crickets and cicadas, and a ludicrous bug like an aerial lawnmower, trimming through the heat. At the same time, a cloud of fireflies appeared, and flickered around as if they were the cosmos, on a visit to the flowers. Then, all of a sudden, the evening was torn apart by the sound of a sawmill, bursting into life. It was all the work of a single beetle, who’d waited fourteen years for this moment and had twenty-four hours to live.‘Ah, the six o’clock beetle!’ cried Hubert, as if it were just on time.But the beetle didn’t just work through cocktail hour. It carried on sawing all night; through bedtime, the witching hour, the small hours and the early morning dew. It was still at peak production, when – at four – I finally drifted off, into a light industrial sleep. I could hardly blame it. When you’ve only got two six o’clocks in your life, you want to make them last.Dawn was simply the evening thrown into reverse. The glass reappeared, the eaters returned, and the tweeters fell quiet. The last to go was the lawnmower, bumbling off to bed. That left only a distant, constipated roar. It was the howler monkeys with their usual public announcement: Approach at your peril, and we’ll pelt with dung. But even they stopped when the sun broke through. Soon, it had burnt off the cool, clammy vapours of the night, and torpor was restored.”

I found this book fascinating. I lived and worked in what was then British Guiana and I also visited Suriname all of 50 years ago. The book brought back for me many memories of life as it was then and the expectations held in anticipation of forthcoming independence. Whether the hopes of those years were fulfilled can be judged from the author's impressions of his visit. Nobody can have the same impressions of a country when there as a visitor as one can have from living there amongst its people. That said, the author's experiences will prove an attraction or a deterrent, as the case may be, for anyone plannning to visit this off the tourist track region. They will also provide stimulative reading for anyone, including Guyanese settled in Britain, interested in the colonial period and its aftermath.

Absolutely fascinating - absorbing, interesting and well written. An incredibly well-researched book on a region (the Guianas) I knew next to nothing about. Reading about the history and the behaviour of the European settlers is not for the faint-hearted (is it ever?) and even the recent turmoil is unsettling thereby (further) demonstrating that politics is never easy. This is probably just my imagination but the book is written in such a way that I felt I was actually travelling with John as he was writing the book - of course it makes me want to go there for real now. A terrific book.