Pratique du Shadowing: I Took the ONLY Flight Between South America’s Most Isolated Cities - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo
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Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana.
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Three neighbours sitting side by side on the north coast of South America.
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But despite sharing hundreds of miles of borders, travelling between them is surprisingly difficult.
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There's no trains connecting them, no bridges across either international border, and one of the three doesn't even have a direct flight to either of its neighbours.
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But hidden away at this tiny airport in Guyana, I found one of the few flights that does connect them.
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It uses a 19 seat plane that flies between two airports most people have never heard of.
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And it might just be the easiest way of crossing one of South America's most awkward borders.
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So the airline I'm flying on today is called Gum Air
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and they operate one of only a handful of international flights out of Ogil airports every day.
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Two of them across the border to Suriname.
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So let's go and see if we can get checked in for Gum Air.
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Hi, is this Gum Air?
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Okay, perfect, thank you.
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Thank you, good afternoon, how are you?
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Good, how are you?
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Yeah, doing good, thank you.
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Do you have an A3T culture?
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No, what's that?
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Let me show you what it looks like.
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What is what it looks like?
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Do you like this?
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No, I don't.
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I'll let me do it now for you, sorry.
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Alright, thank you very much.
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Hello?
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You need it to be on the side.
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You need to receive it.
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Yeah, okay, perfect.
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Thank you very much, yep.
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Okay, and what, around the corner, yeah?
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Yeah, it's a good one.
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Okay, yeah, okay, thank you.
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We're down that way now.
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Okay, thank you.
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Hey there, how are you?
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Did you pull out to a conversion plan?
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For Suriname or for here? For Suriname.
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On the way in I did.
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Do I need to do another one on the way out?
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Yeah.
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Oh, okay, right.
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You need to confirm the machine.
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Yeah, okay, I'll go and do that.
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Thank you.
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Okay, that should be done now.
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Thank you.
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Amazing.
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Thank you.
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All right, and then all checked in, all through security and customs and everything to say goodbye to Guyana.
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I've had to do three forms today to take this one hour flight.
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One to leave Guyana, another two to enter Surinale.
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And I've also had to pay a $60 fee, an entrance fee, which I don't remember having to do last time I went, but apparently that's a new thing.
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You've now got to pay $60 to enter and that's kind of part of the issue.
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You see, these three Guyanas are all very close to one another, literally next door neighbours, but getting between them is a real hassle.
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It was soon time to get on board my flight, but the question on my mind was still how three neighbouring countries ended up quite so disconnected.
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To find the answer to that question out, you've got to go back a few hundred years.
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Historically, this whole region was known as the Guyanas.
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And for European empires, having a Guyana became something of a status symbol.
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Having a Guyana was basically the colonial equivalent of owning a Hermes handbag.
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It was the ultimate designer accessory for every aspirational European empire.
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The Spanish had one.
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Batandra, Milio, Patagonia.
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The Portuguese had one.
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Azzone Cristiano Ronaldo!
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The French had one.
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The Dutch had several.
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Evening all.
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And of course never wanted to miss a party as British eventually ended up with one too.
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Help yourself to a packet of crisps.
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Or a ruddy nice plum pudding.
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Over the centuries, they were traded, invaded, merged and renamed, until we eventually ended up with the three that survive today.
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British Guyana became Guyana, Dutch Guyana became Suriname, and French Guyana, well, that one's still French.
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And that's left this tiny stretch of coastline with three completely different identities.
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English in Guyana, Dutch in Suriname and French in French Guyana.
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Three different currencies, three different cultures and three different colonial legacies
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and a transport network that still seems to behave as though they're on completely different continents.
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And yes, today I'm taking the easy way across to Suriname
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and these days traveling from Guyana to Suriname by road is technically possible but it's not exactly straightforward.
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From Georgetown you'd first have to drive east across Guyana towards the border at Molson Creek.
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That's where the road runs into a slight problem.
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You see there's a bloody great river in the way.
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The Correntine River forms the border between Guyana and Suriname and there's no bridge.
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Instead you have to cross by ferry to South Drain before continuing by road towards Paramaribo.
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And that ferry is a pretty crucial piece of infrastructure.
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If it's not running well neither are you.
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In fact the service was suspended again just recently
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because of technical problems so instead I'm taking the considerably quicker option flying over it.
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Despite this looking like just a regular little commuter fly from Guyana over to Surinam,
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it's actually an incredibly important part of the transport infrastructure over here.
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Now, GUM Air has been flying between Suriname and Guyana for years, but this particular service is much newer.
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Instead of using the country's main international airports, it connects two much smaller airports close to their respective capitals.
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And since late 2024, GUM Air has been operating the route with this, their 19-seat Beechcraft 1900D.
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And honestly, I think as much as it is a really loud, quite cramped drive, a lot of paperwork to contend with to get on board,
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I think I'd still rather do this than a six hour trek across the jungle
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and then crossing a river in the process as well.
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You know they say folks around here in Texas like nothing more than riding a bull.
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But me, I'm not so sure.
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However, I do declare, why go bull riding when you can go sharp surfing?
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Oh.
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Well, at least my web browsing is safe now.
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Now Surfshark might not be able to resurrect my laptop from the dead, but what it does do, and this is actually the reason I use it, is the boring but genuinely important stuff.
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Every time you connect a hotel Wi-Fi or airport Wi-Fi or
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that one cafe in Bangkok where the a network's called free wifi, definitely not a trap.
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Wikidata is essentially out in the open.
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Anyone on that network can potentially see what you're doing.
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Passwords, emails, bank logins, the lot.
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Surfshark encrypts all of that, WhatsApp and your connections private, and whoever's lurking on the cafe wifi gets absolutely nothing.
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But it's also much more than a VPN.
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It also blocks ads and trackers, monitors your email for data breaches, and warns you if your details have been leaked online, which given how often I'm in airports, is genuinely useful.
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One subscription, unlimited devices, so it's covering my phone, my laptop, and, well, whatever I end up replacing that with.
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Head to surfshark.com slash Noel Phillips, or use code Noel Phillips at checkout, and you'll get four extra months free.
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30-day money-back guarantee, so if you hate it, you get your money back.
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Links in the description.
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But here's where the story of the three Guyana gets even stranger, because we're currently solving only one of their transport problems.
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Once we arrive in Suriname, there's still another Guyana sitting immediately next door.
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French Guyana.
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And there's currently no direct scheduled flights from Suriname to French Guyana.
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Or from Guyana to French Guyana.
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So to continue east, you're back on the road.
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You can drive from Paramaribo to Albina on the Surinamese border, but then you run into another bloody correct river.
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The Maroni separates Suriname from French Guyana.
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And you may be spotting something of the theme here there's no bridge across this border either.
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So once again, you have to cross the river by boat or ferry before continuing through French Guyana by road, which means that despite sitting neatly beside one another on a map,
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traveling through all three Guyanas over land means crossing two international borders by river.
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So then we've started already set down into Char and Marip.
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We're not landing at the main international airport, just like we didn't take off from the main international airport over in Georgetown.
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We're landing into the EHE airport which is a brand new domestic airport primarily right in the downtown area of Paramaribo.
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Now for being in a region as disconnected as the Guyanas, Paramaribo has a surprising number of airports.
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The main airport's about an hour out of town in Zandridge but in downtown Paramaribo So there's two airports now, the old downtown airport at Zorgenhub,
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which serves domestic flights and the brand new airports, Edward Alexander Gumors or EAG airport, serving Gomez flights to Guyana.
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And that's the one we're landing at today.
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And just like that we made it to Suriname.
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Barely an hour after leaving Georgetown, we'd crossed a border that would have taken most of the day to negotiate over land.
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No long drive across Guyana, no waiting for a ferry, no river crossing, just a very noisy little airplane.
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Have a good day with you.
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Yeah, thanks.
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Have a good day.
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Yeah, you too.
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Hello.
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The airport we'd arrived at is almost as interesting as the flight itself.
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BAG Edward Alexander Gummel's Airport is one of the newest airports in South America.
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Gumair began operating this scheduled international link to Ogil in December 2024, giving Paramaribo another direct connection with neighboring Guyana.
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Thank you very much.
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Thank you.
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Hey, how are you?
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Can you take me to the Radisson, please?
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Radisson?
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The new one, yeah.
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Maybe, maybe, how much doesn't come here?
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Like, oh, like 12 people, maybe 13.
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It was busy, but it's a small plane, so.
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Okay, yeah, thank you.
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And as I headed into Paramaribo, it struck me just how different Surinam already felt from the country.
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I'd left barely an hour earlier.
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We traveled only a couple of hundred miles, but we'd gone from an English speaking former British colony to a Dutch speaking former Dutch colony.
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And if I'd continued east into French Guyana, I'd eventually arrived somewhere using French,
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euros, and technically be back in the European Union or without ever leaving the South American mainland.
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Perfect, thank you very much.
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And I'll let you know about tomorrow, yeah?
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Yeah.
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All right, thanks very much.
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Thank you.
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Oh, sorry, it's a door.
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And it's not just the airports that are new here in Paramaribo.
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The hotels are too.
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Last time I stayed here, there wasn't much in the way of hotels, but now they've built this brand new Sheraton on the other side of town.
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This lift is going up.
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This lift is going up.
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Welcome to Paramaribo and this is quite nice.
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This is a brand new hotel.
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This is the Radisson.
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Paramaribo, last time I came, it wasn't blessed with a good selection of hotels really and I had to stay in this courtyard by Marriott.
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It wasn't that great.
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It was a bit basic and a bit not very good even though it was really expensive.
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But this is just the same price that that was and look what I've got.
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I've got like a three room area.
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I've got a bathroom in there.
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I've got a living room down through there
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and I've got a bedroom down here down here
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and then we've even got a nice little balcony showing how the side of a warehouse
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which is amazing really there we go that's my view from here in Paramarigoon
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that that was Gumair by Gum that was Gumair
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and the flight that's actually super super important let's be honest
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that flight had I not taken it today it would have taken me a good six
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or seven hours to get across here and And that's not including waiting at the border crossing on the river, getting a little boat across the river in the middle of the jungle.
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It's adventurous, but it's not convenient, really.
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And then, fingers crossed that Gommair starts opening a few more little routes like that, to maybe French going along.
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That might be quite nice to be able to give you a chance to hop across there as well.
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This part of the world is desperately under-connected, in my experience.
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And hopefully, with airlines like Gommair coming along, they might...
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Well, you never know.
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They might get a little bit easier to get between the airports.
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Let me know what you thought to them down in the comments below.
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As always, thank you so much for watching, take care, and I'll see you on the next one.
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Bye for now.
À propos de cette leçon
Vous vous entraînez en anglais avec "I Took the ONLY Flight Between South America’s Most Isolated Cities" en utilisant la technique du Shadowing.
Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?
Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.