Georgetown is probably the least expensive capital city in the world to traverse with a taxi-fare for one drop $300 (US$1.50), while the fare on any minibus route is $60 (30 US cents). The bonus is a ‘chapta’ adventure, a roller coaster ride with the sonic boom of indecipherable music in the enclosed jam-packed minibuses; the incessant horns hooting in routine standstill, gridlock traffic jams; and Usain Bolt-style dashes to beat every traffic light. Praying is expected, and choking possible as the breath is held in this daily lottery of playing chicken on the roadway.
As Georgetown developed with wards in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the streets of Bourda, Kingston, Vlissengen, Newtown and Queenstown were burnt earth tracks with bridges to cross the several canals. Initially, horses were forbidden on some streets, so walking was the norm. Of course the rich would have had their horse and carriage, with challenges to traverse quagmire streets during the rainy season, and they were strewn with cinders and debris from the too frequent fires to try and make them serviceable. From 1832, the George Knox and Co, Saddlery and Coachworks Materials, on Hincks Street, specialized in the importation of saddles, and by 1909 the business was still going strong.
The Georgetown Livery Stables Company opened in April 1902, with three large premises on Hincks, High, and Camp Streets. They had no less than 65 horses and seventy English and American carriages. Most of them were rubber tyred, and were available at all hours for
