Blogs from Suriname, South America - page 2

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

June 2011. It was time to wander. A month before, I had been reading about Columbia, thinking I wanted to go back to South America. Late one night, I was playing around with ideas in that part of the world. For some reason, I started reading about the capitol of Guyana, Georgetown. I thought for a minute. What did I know about this country? The answer was almost nothing. I did know a little. Most people have heard of the Jamestown cult murders in the 1970s. My father has an amazing hobby of hunting for and finding antique bottles in the mangroves where he lives in South Florida. He knows bottle dealers in a few places in the Caribbean, one guy he knows lives in Guyana. The bottles my father has bought from him come wrapped ... read more

So here is the exciting story you've all been waiting for... The title gives it away a bit... It all starts on my first day in Georgetown. In fact, it started months earlier, when I'd e-mailed the Suriname embassy about getting a visa (the only country in Latin America I needed one for) and had received a reply saying I just needed to turn up at the embassy in Georgetown and they would do all the paperwork there and then. So on the afternoon I'd got to Georgetown, after my first shower in 3 days, I headed straight for the embassy. I figured civil servants are the same all over the world and they wouldn't be open too late, so I hurried and got there at 3.15pm. Upon arrival, I breathed a sigh of relief when ... read more

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

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