River Cruising / Scenic Float in September

The Essequibo is Guyana's liquid highway, and moving on it slowly is a reward in itself. Above the confluence town of Bartica the river spreads into a maze of forested islands, black-water creeks and old Dutch trading channels, and a scenic boat journey here threads between them at the pace of the current. This is not white water; it is a float past walls of rainforest where you scan the banks for kingfishers, herons, toucans and osprey, spot three-toed sloths hanging in riverside trees, and watch for the tucuxi river dolphins that surface in the wider reaches. Island resorts and creek landings break the journey for a swim in tea-coloured water, a forest walk or a stop at Bartica's frontier market. The Essequibo has drawn river travellers since Walter Raleigh's day, and its lower island belt, an easy day or overnight from Georgetown, is the most accessible slice of Guyana's interior, big rainforest scenery without a long expedition in.

The Sepik is the Amazon of Papua New Guinea, a vast brown river looping through a floodplain of swamp, lakes and rainforest with no road along it, so the water is the highway and the village is the world. What draws travellers is the culture of its banks: the haus tambaran, tall spirit houses with soaring painted facades, the finest woodcarving in the Pacific, and initiation rites in which young men's backs are cut to scar like a crocodile's skin, marking the river's crocodile ancestor. You move by boat, either a shallow-draught cruiser on the tributaries and Blackwater Lakes or a motor canoe on the main river, stopping at villages to see carvers at work, spirit houses opened to visitors and daily life that still runs to the rhythm of the flood. It is one of the last places to witness a living river culture on this scale, remote, unhurried and reached only by water or light aircraft.