None of its natural features make a more eminent case for Essequibo’s potential as one of Guyana’s most attract tourist destinations than its tranquil and idyllic lakes, not least Lake Mainstay, located at the Mainstay/Whyaka Amerindian Village, seven miles from the region’s administrative hub at Anna Regina and a twenty-minute plane ride from Georgetown.
Lake Mainstay, however, remains a microcosm of the wider condition of stifled tourism potential that has afflicted Guyana for decades, though not even the failure to invest in the key infrastructure necessary for its blossoming has robbed the facility of its pride of place amongst the country’s favoured visitor attractions.
The Resort had been popularized as a tourist site during the 1980’s though Wilfred Jagnarine, a current investor believes that fate took a hand in its fortunes with the death of Forbes Burnham in August 1985, months before the facility was due to be commissioned. Afterwards, Jagnarine says, plans for the commissioning were more or less pushed to one side apparently on economic grounds and Mainstay, thereafter, was kept alive by the strong case it had long made as a potential tourist destination by its original investors, Jagnarine, Basil Dyal, Mokesh Daby, Roy Bassoo and the late Ronald Bassoo. Commissioning was eventually completed in December 1999.
