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Blogs from Paramaribo, Suriname, South America
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December 22nd 2012
Day 428 Wednesday 12th December The lady must have called Frank the taxi driver because at 7.40am still no taxi and at 7.45am still no taxi, apparently he had to take his kids to school that’s OK we only need to catch a ferry. The lady quickly called another taxi and he turned up in within a few minutes and got us down the port which was only 5 minutes away. If we had missed the ferry it really was no problem because motorised canoes do the trip all day. This taxi dropped us right in front of the Federal Police building at the port where we were stamped out of French Guiana and we walked the few steps down to the car ferry which costs 4 euros each for the 15 minute journey to Suriname. ... read more
August 31st 2012
Firstly we had to get there from Macapa, simples!! You’d think?? We had 2 seats booked for the 11 hour overnight trip to Oiapoque on the border. Unfortunately, we had been sold seats 46 and 47 on a 46 seater bus! Option 1, stay in Macapa and catch the bus the following morning (all at the bus company’s expense) or Option 2, stay on the bus, standing in the aisle for 11 hours and accept a refund as an apology? Bargain….we’ll take option number 2 please…. that was one tough journey!!! The trip was followed by a 2 hour wait for the striking Brazillian Police to open the Immigration office and a stunning taxi boat ride under the bridge which is built but is yet to open and finally, we arrived in French Guyana, Europe, strange…but ... read more
January 5th 2012
Hello everyone, it has been a while since I wrote a blog! Some of you knew already, last October I won a return ticket of Insel Air. They organized a photo-competition on Facebook. I had a choice from each and every destination they fly to. Obviously I wasn't going to choose a nearby destination. I chose for Suriname, which is the furthest they fly to, after the USA. Since mid-2011 I started to think about Suriname again because last time I was there was in mid-2004 and I really wanted to go again. Surinam is a country in northeastern South America. It used to be part of the Dutch Kingdom, until 1975, therefore Curaçao still has ties with the country. It has around 500 000 people and it's capital is Paramaribo. It's sparsely populated, most people ... read more
May 21st 2011
"The same evening we went into town. Along the streets we see beautiful wooden houses and high palms. Remarkable is that they lack any glass in the windows. I have to adapt to the food. Only the papaja's (a kind of fruit) are very delicious. The beer (Parbo = Amstel) is sold in one liter bottles: Djogo's. Everywhere are whores. This night I will sleep for the first time under a mosquitonet." I write this in my diary on Friday 13th of december 1968. I was then 21 years old. Now I am 63 and I am again in Paramaribo. The beautiful wooden houses, the high palms and the djogo's are still there, but the whores have disappeared, together with the TRIS-(Troepenmacht in Suriname) soldiers, the boys who served in Suriname, which was a Dutch colony ... read more
April 28th 2011
Well perhaps not sweating to the oldies at the moment, but definitely sweating a lot. In addition to the very North American behavior of moving from air conditioned building to air conditioned building, we have adopted a few Surinamese practices for handling the heat. To Wit: two, or sometimes three showers per day to cool off, men going shirtless around the home in the evening (not particularly pretty, but effective), and women going, shall we say 'alfresco', under their summer dresses. Yesterday we used the pool at a downtown hotel for a few hours, and it saved us. Today, we stayed put and did a few things around Astrid's house in the morning and are checking out a mall with an internet cafe this afternoon. The Carnival of Wellness Later we are going to watch a ... read more
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April 26th 2011
Today we went right into the heat of the day to get to an amazing butterfly garden near the city. This place breeds exotic butterflies for sale to butterfly gardens in the US and Eurpope. Pretty neat place. Unfortunately, I can't share photos of it because we just bought a new memory card for the camera, and the card with the photos is in Pauline's purse, and not here with me in the camera. (foiled again). The one photo we have on the new card is of the sign for an english bookstore. I am sharing it because it is going to be our saviour here. You see, Abbey ran out of english books to read some time ago, and she doesn't have a lot to do on her own when we're around Astrid's house in ... read more
April 24th 2011
Still touring around Parimaribo. Our host, Astrid must have pulled in a lot of favors, because everywhere we go, there is somebody who has been lined up to feed us. Yesterday her sister and brother in law took us to the pool at a local fitness club, then to a Javanese restaurant. Lovely. Abbey and their daughter Priscilla are cooking plans for a sleepover this week. Whoever called this the 'rainy season' was WAY OFF BASE. It has been hot, and muggy for four days, and at times opressive. It dipped down to 28 Celsius by 8:30 tonight, and that's about as bearable as it gets. We considered changing flights to come back a few days early but decided to just 'suck it up buttercup', and see all we can here before we leave. Am writing ... read more
April 21st 2011
Sorry for the recent radio silence. The travel day to Suriname was a long one, and mostly without problems. Maybe more on that later. The main thing is that we are on the ground, and visiting with our friend Astrid MacDonald, who lives south of Parimaribo. We met Astrid 15 years ago when Sue Holloway and the late Murray Kocis asked us to host her through an organization called Canadian Crossroads. She lived with us for three months, and we thoroughly tortured her with various activities in the cold fall weather. Now it's her turn for revenge. Despite this supposedly being the rainy season, we haven't had any appreciable rain in the last two days, and have instead been met with unbelievable, unrelenting heat. Our first full day, yesterday, started nice enough, but around nine in ... read more
August 15th 2009
Due to our late arrival we would need to catch up on some sleep before seeing Paramaribo. As time for us is beginning to run out we only really had one week to spend in the Guyanas. We were already up against it because we could only fly into Suriname - flying into French Guiana would have been the logical route. However the only international flights to Cayenne are from Paris and classed as a domestic flight. This logistical problem means that we would have to move quickly if we were to visit French Guiana, due to the fact that we would be doubling back on ourselves. More time issues have also come to light for the last segment of our trip here - getting from Guyana back to Venezuela is near impossible. The two countries ... read more
August 2nd 2009
The flight to Paramaribo from Belem was late by 15 minutes, and I noticed I was the sole backpacker, most were Brazilians and of course Surinamese. Weird when we got in the plane all the stewardesses were wearing masks, I felt like entering a hospital. later on they sprayed some perfume disinfectant stuff. While on flight they distributed forms to fill up for customs and immigrations, suddenly there were commotions, people getting up and huddling, I got curious, then I realized they were Brazilian laborers and like in school, they are copying each other's information, granted the forms were in Surinamese(Dutch)/English not in Portuguese, I think some cant read and write. This continued on until we landed, only an hour 45 flight. Everyone is trying to be the 1st out of the plane, cant understand why, ... read more
