Paid partnership with KENTUCKY TOURISM

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Kentucky produces 95% of the world’s supply of r he state is the birthplace of bluegrass music and holds many events, such as the Great American Brass Band Festival (Danville in June); Renfro Valley Entertainment Center is known as “Kentucky’s Country Music Capital”.

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Whether it’s music or food, Kentucky is famed for its festivals, held at places s h as he at a t Crossing, a 2,000-seat outdoor music venue in the heart of Kentucky’s bourbon country.

Need To Know Getting There

The key hubs of Louisville and Lexington are well served by connecting flights and the airport of Northern Kentucky will have direct BA flights from London Heathrow from summer 2023.

Best Time To Go

With four distinctive seasons, Kentucky has plenty to offer throughout the year. Spring and autumn enjoy particularly pleasant temperatures, with the fall colours not to be missed. Summer is hotter, particularly in the south of the state, making this a good time to visit Kentucky’s many lakes and waterways –surprisingly, although the state is landlocked, it has more navigable water than any state other than Alaska, and even has more shoreline than Florida.

CURRENCY US dollar

TIME ZONE GMT -5 or -6 (location dependent).

Food

Bourbon features strongly in many local recipes, and fried chicken – made world famous by Kentucky Fried Chicken – is a staple of the state’s cuisine. Try local dishes such as hot brown, burgoo and derby pie.

Where To Stay

There are plenty of options for all budgets, from bijou designer hotels to treehouses and anything in between. Touring in an RV (motorhome) is a great way to see the state.

How To Do It

Like so much of the States, you’ll need a vehicle to get the most out of a visit, whether on an escorted tour or by hiring a car or an RV. A number of specialist tour operators, including America As You Like It and Trailfinders, can put together a trip to Kentucky.

MUST-PACK ITEM

Cool clothes for summer and layers for winter. But most of all, a spirit for adventure and fun.

Why Go

To surprise yourself with the variety of things to do and experience in Kentucky, while enjoying a large apple-pie-sized slice of southern hospitality.

IN THE PRISTINE WILDERNESS OF REMOTE WESTERN GUYANA , JAMIE LAFFERTY DISCOVERS HE HAS MORE IN COMMON WITH HIS INFLUENCER COMPANIONS THAN HE’D FIRST THOUGHT.

Looking out in the darkness, soft tungsten light pouring from the guesthouse behind us, two travel influencers and I were sitting on a porch in Paruima, a village in the far west of Guyana. One of the elders approached us, a representative of his Arecuna community. We were among the first guests to go on a new four-day hiking itinerary that started and ended at this very spot. He wanted to know what we did – why were we there, in his homeland.

I explained that my trade is old fashioned, that I took notes with pen and paper, shot images on a heavy camera, then handed an essay – this essay – over to editors and designers to make it sing. The TikToker went next. He explained that his work was much more instant, there would be quick results and immediate reaction. He made videos with ‘super enthusiasm’ for his followers. This seemed a little ironic to me as we were to spend the time in the wilderness – without electricity, phone signal or Wi-Fi. Our only followers would be a few heroic porters from the village. The light from the lodge was being provided by a diesel generator that had only been turned on so we could charge our batteries for a final time. The influencers had a lot of batteries.

The TikToker was at least sincere in his answer, even giving a quick, neat summary of social media as a concept. The YouTuber was next. He was on his phone. He was very often on his phone, neck craned at 45 degrees, refreshing pages with the need of a degenerate. The elder asked him the same question. Guyana is the only Englishspeaking country in South America and rudeness translates as well as any sentence.

The influencer looked up. ‘Me? I make videos for YouTube. Next.’ He went back to his phone. Inside, I was screaming.

The next day the hike began, with a total of four porters carrying our hammocks and rudimentary camping supplies. Improbably, other Arecuna people would meet us along the way to provide food, some travelling from over the highly porous border with Venezuela. The water we got from streams, which never looked particularly clear, but never made us sick, either.

On that first day we hugged the Kamarang River for around an hour, then turned inland. Ahead lay another irritation. It had been a long journey to get to the monkey bridge but, standing in front of it, I felt I could go no further. A log had been set across a muddy creek, which was bracketed with muddy banks, at the end of an equally muddy trail. So much of these mires had accumulated on the bottoms of my boots that I had no grip at all. Meanwhile, the log had no handrail or guard of any kind – it was just a log. To step out on it felt as appealing as trying to cross an ice rink wearing bowling balls for skates, except with an added 10ft drop.

As I stood looking at the doom lying before me, a boy came racing down to the creek, not to save me, but to haul out a piranha that he’d stunned further upriver. He looked at me and I looked at him and I wondered which of us was more astonished in the moment.

Eventually, the porters saw the raw fear in my eyes and led me to a less impossible monkey bridge further upstream, allowing me to go back to chasing the influencers. Both were younger and fitter than me and the only real chance I had of keeping up with them was when they stopped to record pieces to camera (which was often) or to launch a drone (which was mercifully rare).

Thankfully I was not short of distractions along the route. Guyana is as close to an unspoiled tourist destination as it’s possible to get these days and this new itinerary felt even more so. Skinks and geckos hung from the innumerable trees, and I was always checking the canopy for an elusive Guyanese cockof-the-rock, an outrageously prissy bird with flamboyant orange feathers and an excellent mohawk. Parakeets would periodically fly overhead and once in a while their prettier and more raucous cousin, the macaw, would bisect the sky, too.

But there was no avoiding the hiking, no ignoring the fact this was a physical challenge – as much as it was of my patience every time one of the influencers broke off to film themselves while in the middle of a conversation. Perhaps my shame gland is overactive, but theirs seemed to have been surgically removed.

One of the biggest pities was just how incurious they seemed about their host country, especially as Guyana is almost defined by what people don’t know about it. Bring it up in conversation and you can expect to be met with a vacant look before your audience nervously ventures that they too wish they’d been to west Africa. No, you’ll then reply, not Ghana – Guyana.

Here are some facts about Guyana: it was once part of a quintet of Guianas that were variously the colonial possessions of Spain (now part of Venezuela), the Netherlands (now Suriname), Portugal (now part of Brazil), France (incredibly still part of France) and Britain. As such it is the only English-speaking country in South America. On three separate visits I have never met a Guyanese person who identifies as South American, nor a South American who regards Guyana as a true part of the continent.

Another fact: in 1978 the Jonestown Massacre took place in northern Guyana, committed by a death cult led by an American murderer named Jim Jones. Many of the 908 who died were forced to consume a drink laced with cyanide. In the intervening decades this has been mislabelled as Kool-Aid (it was actually Flavor Aid, though many more victims were simply shot) and gave rise to what must be a hugely insulting phrase for relatives of the victims: ‘They really drank the Kool-Aid.’

One more fact: the interior of the country is exceedingly beautiful, a rare and pristine wilderness home to tabletop mountains, immense jungle, and some of the world’s largest and most sensational waterfalls. The country’s three largest were the main prizes on our trip.

The first was Kaieteur, which we visited before we’d even got to Paruima. If Guyana was New York and waterfalls were buildings, this would be the Empire State. The country’s national emblem has its own airstrip and makes for a popular flying day trip from the capital city, Georgetown. It is the world’s largest single-drop waterfall by volume, absurdly photogenic and dramatic. We stopped there for just a couple of hours before flying on to Paruima for the multiday hike to Kamarang and Uchi falls.

Back on the trail, by the end of the muddy first day we’d summited our first real plateau, then slept uneasily in our hammocks. We awoke to morning dew, endless views across the jungle, and the sounds of the wild places rising. As I looked out across the vast green carpet, head guide Caleo Elliman approached and stood at my side. ‘Do they have forests like this in your country?’ he asked. I let out a laugh that was a little sadder than I meant it to be. I couldn’t remember ever seeing greenery like this, much less in denuded Scotland.

As the toucan flies, Venezuela is only a few miles from this spot and as we began our second day – which had few ascents but lasted for 12 sweaty miles – the border grew closer by the step. When the hammocks were hung that night, we watched a lightning storm form then explode just over the border.

As dawn broke on the third day, we hiked down to the precipice of the mighty Kamarang Falls. Kaieteur is hardly a major tourist destination itself, but it is growing in international popularity. Here, Kamarang was at least as impressive and yet we were the only foreigners around for hundreds of miles. As the influencers dangled their legs over the edge and exaggerated the 520ft height of the falls for their videos, I speculated what this experience might be like in other countries. Busier, certainly, and more regulated. Safer too, perhaps, but ultimately inferior. For a moment I worried that our exposure of it would contribute to its sanitisation.

The trip continued and by now the bitterness I felt towards my fellow travellers was waning. The fact they were younger and earned several times what I do of course still rankled, but once in a while we were able to have conversations about travel and the world. I may have found their delivery methods as shallow as day-old puddles, but when my camera died, the YouTuber lent me his. When the TikToker found out I’m diabetic, he frequently enquired if my blood sugar was in range and offered me snacks.

The hike was proving a great equaliser, too. None of us found it too easy and none of us lacked sincerity when we tried to sum up how the falls electrified our minds when we encountered them. We dined with the porters, who told us stories and listened to ours while the stars shone overhead. During the days, we came up with running jokes that followed us all the way back to Paruima.

The last day had us descend the mountains back into the jungle. When we finally rejoined the river, we turned at a confluence to make a 45-minute hike to Uchi Falls, a journey that was partially interrupted by a tapir, a potentially deadly coral snake, and chaotic butterflies flitting through the undergrowth.

Kaieteur had been the most picturesque of Guyana’s great falls, and Kamarang its most exciting, but Uchi was perhaps the most satisfying. From the valley floor we admired it as a tumbled 702ft into a misty plunge pool. The falls draped from a curved cliff like silk over the arm of an expert tailor, greenery holding onto the sheer face thanks to water droplets spinning up from the crescendo below. Uchi gave life to the valley and the valley gave Uchi its perfect setting in return. ‘Awesome,’ said the influencers, to their cameras and to each other. They were more correct than they knew.

The Falls

DRAPED FROM A CURVED CLIFF LIKE SILK OVER THE ARM OF AN EXPERT TAILOR.

Need To Know Getting There

British Airways fly to Georgetown via Saint Lucia.

BEST TIME TO GO

Guyana has two dry seasons, running approximately from February to April and September to November. Expect heavy rainfall outside these months.

CURRENCY Guyanese dollar

TIME ZONE GMT -4

Food

Guyanese food is an interesting mix of AfroCaribbean and Indian. Roti wraps are popular, as are dishes like salt fish. The national dish is a thick stew based on indigenous recipes called pepper pot.

WHERE TO STAY

Tourism is a nascent business in Guyana and accommodation options are limited. On remote treks in the interior, tour operators will organise make-shift camps. In Georgetown, the longrunning Cara Lodge offers a chance to stay in a former British colonial building in the city centre.

How To Do It

Wilderness Explorers’ (wilderness-explorers.com)

Guyana Highlands Trekking Adventure is a six-day itinerary that starts and ends in Georgetown and includes Kamarang and Uchi falls.

MUST-PACK ITEM

Insect repellent.

Why Go

Despite being the only English-speaking country in South America, more tourists visit Antarctica in an average year than visit Guyana. This lack of exposure means it offers a rare chance to feel like you’re genuinely discovering something and this is never truer than at its sensational waterfalls, deep in the country’s interior.