Black caiman are the largest predator in the entire Amazon basin.
Pairs of glowing eyes stared back at us as our spotlight passed over the water, punctuating the night’s darkness like something out of a horror film. Still, we continued navigating the river, our metal boat slipping stealthily past tree boas, hugging the nearby tree branches, and hungry piranhas hunting their prey beneath the shimmering surface below. Here in the wilds of southern Guyana’s Rupununi region, a place of rich biodiversity and extreme natural beauty, it’s easy to feel like everything you once knew in life was little more than some random dream.
Local villagers call the Rupununi River the “caiman highway” for the abundant crocodilian reptiles permeating its waters. Unlike other species of caiman—amphibious carnivores that resemble American alligators and are native to South America—the black caiman found here are unusually large, with some even reaching up to 20 feet in length. In fact, black caiman are the largest predator in the entire Amazon basin, which spreads across 2.7 million square miles of the South American continent.
This includes about 3.1% of Guyana, an English-speaking country on South America’s North Atlantic Coast that’s about the size of England and overwhelmingly covered in forest. But despite being home to some incredible wildlife, from black caiman and giant anteaters to jaguars and giant anacondas—all of which have earned it the nickname, the “Land of Giants”—Guyana remains one of South America’s least-visited countries.
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“Whenever we pop up on Jeopardy, it’s usually a celebration,” said Omodelle George, the president of the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana, over dinner one night. “We’re all just sitting there waiting for them to be stumped.”
However, things are beginning to change. Over the last decade, the discovery of 11 billion barrels of oil off the country’s coast has brought new houses and a hotel boom to Georgetown, both its capital and its largest city. For now, however, Guyana’s interior remains largely untouched, including its Rupununi Region.
“Guyana is not a place that you can come and book onsite,” says Colin Edwards, the founder and managing director of Rock View Lodge, tucked away on the plains of the Rupununi savannah grasslands. “You’ve definitely got to plan in advance.”
That’s because paved roads and street signs are virtually non-existent in places like the Rupununi region, which borders Brazil. Even the “trail” connecting the local town of Lethem with Georgetown is a mostly gravel stretch that takes as many as 13 hours to navigate in the dry season and exponentially more during the rainy season, December through May. There are no rest stops or convenience stores, and you might drive for an hour or two without encountering another vehicle. Instead, the Rupununi, in particular, is a land of open savannah, lush rainforest, and open water where giant otters reside in the dense root systems along riverbanks and dragonflies compete for aviation space with red-capped cardinals and green kingfishers.
Thankfully, local outfitter Wilderness Explorers runs multi-day tours where visitors can experience Guyana’s wide range of nature activities first-hand—including tracking black caiman in the wild.
In Search of the Black Caiman
There are only two known projects on the planet studying black caiman and their nesting areas. One is along the Amazon River, and the other is here on the banks of the Rupununi River at a place called Caiman House. Both an overnight lodge and a research station, Caiman House is owned and operated by the Rupununi’s Indigenous Yupukari community. Over the years, they’ve caught and tagged approximately 843 black caiman, a species that was almost extinct due to a high demand for its skin. While its numbers have regenerated in Brazil, the reptile remains endangered in Guyana.
To capture one of these scaly nocturnal creatures and collect a bit of data, we set out in a metal motorized utility boat at dusk. Heading downstream, we made our way through the black-sheened waters: a result of algae from the trees lining the riverbanks, and one that made the wildlife and sea life—including arapaima, a freshwater fish that can grow up to 15 feet and weigh over 400 pounds—even harder to see.
After cruising the waters until night fell, we joined a separate boat carrying five researchers and started our search for a black caiman. Traveling several yards apart, our boats advanced quietly through the river. It was a game of patience, waiting to identify those glowing eyes and an opportune time for the researchers to make their move. When they did, it was like watching the second half of the movie Jaws come to life, but instead of a great white shark, the men were wearing down a reptile.
Over the next 15 to 20 minutes, the researchers wrestled with the lassoed creature, wriggling it back and forth while it thrashed and twisted (and trying not to hurt it in the process) and eventually became too tired to fight. At that point, they secured its snout with electrical tape, hauled the reptile into the boat, and then made their way over to a nearby beach to weigh, measure, tag, and sex it. We joined them, experiencing what was likely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stand beside the caiman, get an up-close look at the bony ridge extending from above its eyes down to its jawline, and even touch its scales.
Since Caiman House has a black caiman recapture rate of approximately 33%, it was possible that our reptile had been studied before. Sure enough, this wasn’t the first rodeo for “Number 316” (a name that corresponds with a numbering system that involves counting scales), so the researchers went through the process of updating their data. While black caiman can live anywhere from 60 to 80 years in the wild, ours was about 40 years old. He measured 10 feet, five inches long, and weighed 265 pounds. He also had a barbed wire sticking out near his jawline, which the researchers carefully removed as our group gathered close by in awe.
But when Number 316 started slightly fidgeting, it was time to release him back into the wild. “Stand back there,” one of the researchers told us, pointing toward the far end of the beach as the others brought the reptile to the river. Although caimans typically scramble into the water, the researcher said, there’s always a chance that they can turn into the opposite direction. “You don’t want to be in their path,” he assured us—though no one in our group needed any convincing.
Realizing he was free to go, Number 316 slowly started reworking his limbs and, thankfully, eased his way back into the river. Soon enough, the caiman’s glowing eyes were the only things that remained visible.
The following morning, we returned to the river, this time learning about its role as a lifeline for the region’s Indigenous populations. Local villagers refer to the Rupununi as their “supermarket” for all the nourishment that exists in its waters and around its banks. There are the “basket” and “button” fish—nicknames for the types of fish that reside here—which can be easily preserved through drying and salting, and the bitter cassava trees that are a huge part of the local diet.
“If you eat bitter cassava straight, it can kill you,” said Carla Vantull, Wilderness Explorers’ general manager. This is due to the high levels of cyanide found in its roots. To remove the poison, local residents finely grate the cassava root before pouring it into a long, clinical woven basket called a matapi (a common sight throughout the Rupununi region), squeezing the juice. The fiber that remains is used as the base for cassava bread, an earthy flatbread, while the juice—once it’s left to settle and separate from its toxins and then simmered into a caramelized-like consistency known as cassareep—becomes the backbone ingredient in Guyanese specialties like pepperpot. This slow-cooked, and cinnamony meat-based stew also happens to be the country’s national dish.
Though you could literally spend weeks exploring all the Rupununi region has to offer (giant anteaters, extreme bird watching, rainforest hikes), this “Land of Giants” isn’t limited to southern Guyana alone. So before making our way back to Georgetown—the main hub for flights to the U.S.—we caught a small Cessna aircraft to Kaieteur, a rust-colored cascade in the country’s central Essequibo Territory that’s also the largest single-drop waterfall in the world. With a sheer drop of 741 feet, it’s five times the height of Niagara Falls along the U.S./Canada and more than twice that of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. It’s also only reachable via plane, boat, or on foot.
In this isolated region of insect-eating sundew plants and a tightly packed forest resembling heads of broccoli from the sky, Kaieteur is a stand-out masterpiece. The thundering falls drop over 30,000 gallons of water per second, an incredible undertaking you can literally feel when you belly up to the cliff’s edge at Johnson’s View. On their stomachs is how most visitors view this natural wonder since there are no railings to keep people in check while they’re staring in awe. This is quite common because, like everything else in this small country, Kaieteur was a larger-than-life experience.
