FLYING TRIP INLAND TO THE KAIETEUR FALLS

We use the opportunity of being at Ogle airport for the 1pm Kaieteur Falls day-trip flight to confirm and pay for our hop with Gum Air to Suriname.

But all that takes much less time than we'd expected, so we're weighed and moved to a nice cool room by noon, and settling down as the room gradually fills with a squad of Guyanese, in very fetching matching green T-shirts.

We're called out in order and loaded into the first of four 12-seater aircraft

for the 1 hour, 150 miles flight over virgin amazon rainforest (looking like endless forests of broccoli), punctuated by the odd river or dirt road

and the wide Essequibo.

And then we sight the Potaro river, which will 'fall' in the Kaieteur NP

Coming in to the falls, the pilot does two aerial passes

before setting down on a bumpy strip

and into the National Park

There are several routes to see the falls from various angles. Sadly, the presence of boisterous Team Green scares away any golden tree frogs that might have been waiting in the bromeliads...

The views of the falls are however excellent - they're the world's largest single drop waterfall, 4 times higher than Niagara, twice the height of Victoria Falls, 226m/741ft when measured from its plunge over the sandstone cliff to the first break) by the volume of Potaro river water flowing over it (average flow rate of 663 cubic metres per second/23,400 cubic feet per second)

Shots like this remind you that we're in the dry season - imagine how much more water must plunge when it's rained properly

As well as the (disappearing) golden frogs, there is birdlife, though you have to know what you're looking for. Can you spot the bright orange, fan-crested cock-of-the-rock in the trees?

No, nor me.