THE Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) hosted a press conference on Wednesday December 18, 2019 to share details on its latest tourism activity, “Expedition Mount Roraima”. The expedition featured two Indigenous persons, Edward Jameson and Troy Henry, as well as several expert climbers including Wilson Cuthbert, Waldo Ethrington and Leo Houlding who led the expedition. Henry and Cuthbert were among the first locals to climb to the top of the mountain.

The expedition lasted for one month and saw eight persons being a part of the trip. The participants braved the weather and many other challenging circumstances to make their successful climb to the prow of the 2000-foot-high Mount Roraima.

Minister of State, Dawn Hastings-Williams, spoke on the success of the expedition stating, “I imagine Phillipai in a few years’ time will be seeing much more helicopters and lots more persons who desire to climb the mountains.” The minister further related her amazement at the historical occurrence of having local persons who had the interest, and braved the obstacles to successfully make the climb and being resolute in participating in this type of expedition.

She encouraged the local persons to take the opportunity they were given and make use of the knowledge they had gained to train and teach other persons, so as to broaden the tourism activities within their communities.

Minister of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs, Sydney Allicock, said that the expedition serves as a reminder for Guyanese, of the great nature experience that Guyana has to offer. This gift, he said, will provide a unique future for Guyana in tourism and by extension other businesses. Further, he explained that the collaboration of the locals and the visitors to realise the vision is also instructive of the crucial role partnership has to play in the continued development of sustainable eco-tourism.

“The knowledge of our Indigenous People is key to any venture of this kind. The forest is our backyard, the eco systems demand our respect and that is what we treat it with. I am sure our accomplished visitors can personally vouch for the invaluable service the knowledge and experience of the local guys from the beautiful village of Phillipai,” Minister Allicock said.

Troy Henry, one of the two Guyanese ‘climbers’ on the expedition, related his experience calling it, “difficult” as well as “fulfilling”, he explained that it was difficult navigating the paths and ensuring complete safety, but stated that at the end, the feeling they had gotten, be able to be among the first set of people to climb to the top of the mountain, was unexplainable.

Henry further stated that he was not very fearful while on the expedition and explained that he took strength from his fellow climbers saying to himself, “he’s a human and I’m a human too, if he could climb it, I could do it too.”

The GTA activity aims to encourage the climbing and exploration of Guyana’s mountains as a way of promoting eco-tourism. It believes that the country’s unique flora and fauna would attract persons from around the world, as it already has and this would be extremely beneficial to the country.