Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana, sits at the meeting-point of the Demerara River and the Atlantic Ocean. At dusk, men fish from a narrow concrete embankment that juts out beyond the land, looking across the mouth of the river into the setting sun. Dancehall music drifts over from a massive speaker mounted on a parked car near the seawall. Overhead, flocks of ibis fly east towards the darkening ocean, as they have done every evening since before the city was built.
The view from the embankment is changing. In the past two years, a 65-hectare artificial island has emerged from the mudflats over the river. Further inland, noisy construction work is underway on the biggest power station the small nation has ever seen. And out to sea, a distant row of twinkling lights reveals the location of three platforms floating above the largest oil discovery of the 21st century.
