Guyana’s interior is pioneer country. Those who go are rewarded with elegant places to stay, says Sarah Barrell

It’s 10.30am and the shop assistant is already sweating. The transaction isn’t a tough one. I’m an easy mark, armed with American dollars and a consumer’s hunger for one of the traditional Berbice chairs on sale, complete with planter’s arms and chintzy upholstery, but the simple act of breathing here induces a sauna-like glow.

“So you been to Berbice then?” says the salesman with a slow West Indian drawl. I explain that I haven’t visited the former sugar plantation town in Guyana’s interior, which produces the eponymous chair. “But I am going down the Essequibo River,” I offer. “Into the interior and the Amazon.”

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