Guyana

Guyana is a country in South America.

It has big rivers, rainforest and waterfalls. People speak English. The capital city is Georgetown.

Guyana is in the northeastern corner of South America, next to the Atlantic Ocean. Indigenous people called the land guiana, which means land of water, and that gave the country its name. It is the only country in South America where English is the official language, because Britain ruled it until 1966.

The 2022 census counted 878,674 people. Almost 9 out of 10 live near the coast. Georgetown, the capital, is the main port. Some geographers group Guyana with the Caribbean, because of its history and culture.

Britannica describes Guyana as reflecting its British and Dutch colonial past, the only English-speaking country of South America, with an economy long based on rainforest timber, sugarcane, rice, bauxite and gold. That changed in 2015 with the first of many rich deepwater oil discoveries in the offshore Stabroek Block, where 17 more fields had been found by the end of 2020.

The Bureau of Statistics' preliminary 2022 census count was 878,674 people on the night of September 14–15, 2022, 131,719 (17.63%) more than in 2012, with 440,882 males and 437,792 females. About 87% live in the coastal regions. It was proclaimed a cooperative republic within the Commonwealth on February 23, 1970.

Georgetown is the capital.

It is beside the sea, behind a long wall called a dike. Far inland, Kaieteur Falls pours over a cliff into a green valley.

Georgetown sits at the mouth of the Demerara River. It is actually below sea level, so walls called dikes along the river and the sea keep the water out. Other towns include Linden, where bauxite is mined, and New Amsterdam, a market town on the Berbice River.

Deep in the forest is Kaieteur Falls. Its water drops 226 meters in one sheer plunge, more than twice the height of a football field stood on end. Mount Roraima, a flat-topped mountain, rises on the western border.

Georgetown, the main port and largest city, lies below sea level at the mouth of the Demerara, protected by river and sea dikes; founded during a brief French occupation as Longchamps, it was renamed Stabroek by the Dutch and developed further. Other centers include Linden (bauxite), New Amsterdam (Berbice market town), the Port Mourant sugar estate and the rice center of Anna Regina.

On the Kaieteurian Plateau, generally below 490 m, Kaieteur Falls makes a sheer initial plunge of 226 m (741 feet). The plateau is crowned on the western frontier by the Pakaraima Mountains, which Britannica says reach 2,772 m at Mount Roraima, the mesa where the borders of Guyana, Venezuela and Brazil meet.

Guyana has lots of rain and big rivers.

Most of the land is rainforest. In the south there is a wide, grassy savanna. It is warm all year.

Along the coast is a narrow, flat plain, no more than about 16 kilometers wide. People have won much of it from the sea with canals and about 225 kilometers of dikes. Inland are white sand hills, then a rocky plateau, then mountains in the west.

Four main rivers, the Courantyne, Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo, flow north into the Atlantic. Waterfalls and rapids break them up, so big boats cannot travel far upstream. It is hot and rainy all year, and Georgetown gets about 2,290 millimeters of rain a year.

The coastal plain, about 16 km at its widest, has been reclaimed with canals and some 225 km of dikes; its grayish blue clays come mostly from Amazon alluvium carried west by the south equatorial current. Inland lie the Zanderij white-sands belt, a low crystalline plateau whose igneous intrusions cause the rivers' rapids, the Kaieteurian Plateau, the Rupununi Savanna (bisected by the Kanuku Mountains) and the Pakaraima and Acaraí ranges.

Drainage is poor, with an average river gradient of about 19 cm per km, and mud and sandbars block the estuaries. The climate is equatorial: Georgetown varies from the mid-20s to upper 20s °C, with about 2,290 mm of rain a year in a long wet season (April–August) and a short one (December–early February). High rainforest covers about three-fourths of the land, including greenheart, wallaba, mora and crabwood, while mangroves protect and extend the coast.

Jaguars and tapirs live in the forest.

Capybaras swim in rivers. Bright red scarlet ibises wade by the coast. Manatees swim slowly in the water.

Guyana's forests are full of animals, though most hide well. The tapir is the biggest land mammal, and the jaguar is the biggest cat. Sloths, giant anteaters, capybaras and armadillos live here too, and monkeys and deer are the most common.

Birds are easier to spot: scarlet ibises on the coast, and macaws, bellbirds and the orange cock-of-the-rock in the forest and savanna. Caimans and green anacondas live in the rivers, and manatees are found in the waters too.

Britannica describes Guyana's animal life as immensely varied and abundant, though few species apart from birds and insects are normally visible. The tapir is the largest land mammal and the jaguar the largest cat, with the ocelot; monkeys and deer are commonest, and the sloth, great anteater, capybara and armadillo are among the more exotic.

Birds include the kiskadee, blue sacki, hummingbirds, kingfishers and the scarlet ibis of the coast and lower rivers, and the macaw, tinamou, bellbird and cock-of-the-rock inland. The caiman is the commonest large freshwater animal, and the giant anaconda the largest snake; sharks and stingrays occur offshore and shrimp abound off the coast. The animal photos on this page were taken in other countries.

People in Guyana have families from many places.

Some came from India, some from Africa. Indigenous peoples have lived here longest. Most people live in villages near the coast.

About two-fifths of Guyanese are Indo-Guyanese, whose ancestors came from India to work on sugar plantations. About three-tenths are Afro-Guyanese, descendants of enslaved Africans. About one-fifth have mixed ancestry, and about one-tenth belong to Indigenous peoples such as the Arawak, Carib, Macusí and Wapisiana. Smaller groups have Chinese, Portuguese or Brazilian roots.

English is the official language, and a creole is spoken everywhere. Christians, Hindus and Muslims all live in Guyana. Food mixes South Asian, South American and Chinese dishes with local chiles and fruits.

Britannica gives Indo-Guyanese about two-fifths of the population, Afro-Guyanese about three-tenths, people of mixed ancestry about one-fifth and Indigenous peoples about one-tenth (coastal Warao, Arawak and Carib; interior Wapisiana, Arekuna, Macusí and others, prominent in the Rupununi). Afro-Guyanese left the plantations after full emancipation in 1838; Indo-Guyanese, brought as indentured labor, remain central to farming and are well represented in trade and the professions. Britannica adds that ethnic tensions between the two largest groups have shaped politics.

English is official and a creole patois is universal; Hindi and Urdu are heard among some older Indo-Guyanese. The main religions are Christianity (chiefly Anglican and Roman Catholic) and Hinduism, with a sizable Muslim minority. Villages line the coast with farmlands running inland between canals. Emigration, mainly to the United States, Canada, England and the Caribbean, has long drawn away skilled workers.