GUYANA: THE CONVOYS OF THE LOST WORLD | France 5 | Les Routes de l'Impossible

Guyana is a forgotten and mysterious country. Wedged between Surinam, Venezuela and Brazil, the sole English-speaking country in South America also continues to be one of the poorest and least populated on the continent. Anything can happen in this focal point for adventurers, cowboys and gold prospectors. Outside of Georgetown, the capital on the edge of the sea with the appearance of a colonial town, the rest of the territory resembles a lost world. The Amazon forest covers everything, slashed through here and there by enormous, winding rivers. Beyond the jungle is a vast plain, scorched by the sun in summer and inundated by water in the rainy season. Few will dare to venture into the inner country. And yet a handful of truck drivers take amazing risks to supply the gold mines and rare villages that are there with food and fuel. Aboard their Bedfords, former British Army trucks that have been fixed a thousand times, they must deal with roads full of potholes, cross hostile jungle and brave torrents of mud. Their journeys take them to areas that are among the most isolated on the planet. Here you don’t calculate in kilometres, but in days spent on the road. And a simple breakdown can swiftly lead to dramatic consequences…