SURINAME PART 1

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Nat

2/23/20268 min read

With less and less time on Tu Meke, believe it or not…

…

…we’re really bored.

SO, we’re going to give this another crack: Suriname! (also, the Tu Meke tracker on predict wind is no longer in use)

A note: we went to Guyana before AND French Guiana after, but ‘cos Suriname’s a big chunk, I’ll just be doing that.

THE IRRITATING JOURNEY INTO SURINAME (From Guyana)

If you want to follow our exact steps, follow this:

Get up at 3:30am
Shower, teeth, etc
Be outside the shoddy hotel that’s also a hair salon by 4am, waiting for the van
Find out that its been delayed by half an hour
Actually get picked up at 5am
Too many people in the van anyway, so some people have their kids in their lap
Lots of people snoring, so no sleep (does it surprise anyone to learn that Colette was out like a light?)
Spend four hours like that
Arrive at the ferry terminal at 9am, only to find out that the ferry had been delayed to 11am
Even though the other terminal was visible… and there was nothing going on.
Eventually got onto the ferry, yay
Ferry ride was uneventful, it was BORINGGGG
We saw that everyone was BOOSTING off the ferry, so we did some PRO speed walking and got there in the first swarm of people
Fortunately, because we boosted, we got there relatively early and didn’t have to wait as long!
UNfortunately, we were not the only people travelling in the car so we had to WAIT for the people who did NOT boost!
leave the terminal after about 45mins of waiting
Sit in the car for another four hours
Get lost driving around Paramaribo
Arrive at accomodation (19 Sterappelstraat)
Eventually go to bed at 9pm

And there you have it!

at about 7am

waiting for the van

STILL waiting

BROWNSBERG (a hill)

Ah, Brownsberg.

As soon as Mum and Dad heard about a nature reserve with a few houses on top of a hill, they were like, oh YEAH. So, naturally, we climbed that hill.

Now, the walk in itself was pretty. Nice trees. Nice dirt. Cloud cover. And 13km? Psh, no problem!

But… it’s South America. It’s hot there (spoiler alert). The sun isn’t as bad as it is in NZ, and I just asked Mum if its more humid in Suriname or New Zealand and she said Suriname. Figures, it was really uncomfortable to walk in.

PLUS… there were biting flies. Not itchy-bitey, but PAIN-bitey. Which was even worse to walk in. Also, they’re only in that area a certain time of year. Such luck! Colette and I had two ways of getting rid of them: Smack them with a very colourful hat (that probably attracted the flies anyway, but we whapped them) and DANCE. Dance, dance, dance. Dad got a video of me being chased by flies while Colette screams, “DANCE, NAT, DANCE!” and tries to shoo away the flies with the hat.

No, I will not be sharing that video.

Anyway, we saw this HUGE butterfly that defied belief, a spider monkey doing the rather rude splits above up in a tree, and heard the howler monkeys.

The walk took us three hours, when it was supposed to take us four. (WOO HOO, GO TRAMPING SKILLS)

Mum brings up the excellent memory of the gold panners passing us on their motorbikes with giant guns, unkindly showering us in orange dust. Her thoughts (and I quote): “That was kinda super weird.”

ANYWAY, back to the top of the mountain.

Good view? Check.

You could see the Brokopondo reservoir (which is MASSIVE). A brief history lesson on Brokopondo: Suriname gov displaced several villages to make it, and didn’t move the burial grounds, ew. The villages either stayed as close as they could to their old village, or went up or down river. Brokopondo is also one of the most inefficient resevoirs in the world.

Stay in a bungalow named House Tapir? Check.

See a tarantula within the first hour? Check. It was climbing over House Snake.

Have a whole drama because there was a snake inside House Tapir (kudos to Mum for spotting it)? Check. The people who ran the place chased it out with a broom and then it wiggled into the bathroom (we were all a bit wary when we in there).

I was originally sleeping on the top bunk of the tallest bunk bed, but there were rats in the ceiling, so I moved my mattress to the floor. They were LOUD. We asked the owner of the bungalows and he was adamant that there were no rats. He was definitely wrong.

There were also frogs? We were next to the wood pile and there were LOUD toads. We never actually saw any though.

We did a day trip down to a waterfall, but it was really poorly marked and I got chewed on by the biting flies, so we turned back. Some people staying in House Tapir went down after us and they got ticks and almost got bitten by a snake, so we were glad we turned back.

The next day, we walked back down. It was hotter and… somehow it took us longer. Somehow.

a non bitey fly area

poisonous frog for you, sir?

the SNAKE!!!

ah, the way up

beautiful suriname jungle

morning view from the top

the rude spider monkey

now that we look at this picture, it seems so measly

THE COUSINS (Misty crew) + FREDERICKS…BERG/DORP

After a very long time (May 2022), we finally saw Tim and Sian and George (Georgina) and Fergus (Fern) and Henry.

Unfortunately, they’d all been sick, so when they arrived, we had a very brief “Hi” and then they all tromped up three flights of stairs and left us in our ‘luxurious’ hovel with bunkbeds half the height of Dad. But, hey - we had AC!

Poor Ferg was the sickest the next day. To distract him, we taught them all Heaphy Sneaky Peeky.

Thus began Henry’s obsession.

The day after, we took a bus, then a little boat (gondola style) to a plantation (now a resort) called Fredericksberg or possibly Fredericksdorp. We cannot remember and the internet cannot decide.

Tim, Sian - if you remember, tell us.

We swam in the pool, and I rescued a bird that probably was dead anyway. Colette’s hair turned green with the chlorine, and George, Fergus and Henry had piña coladas for the first time. According to Colette, Fergus did not like it (we gladly finished it). After, the kids, minus Henry, went biking. It was kinda hard because the track was sandy and there were other bikers, but we went into the nearest town and it was nice. I think someone turned back.

After Fredericksberg/dorp, we backtracked and had one (?) more night in the hostel, before…

the other kids are taking a stroll through fredericks___ without me ):

waiting for the bus to take us back to Paramaribo

Roleplaying Titanic on the way to Fredericks...something - luckily we did not hit an iceberg or a pink river dolphin

chicken fighting in the pool at the resort

(this didn't happen at Fredericksdorp/berg but its funny)

on the way to Fredericks

ALL ABOARRRRD

JAW JAW A TELA

There are two villages.

One: Jaw Jaw a Tela. Pronounced: Yaw Yaw a Tela. From my somewhat unreliable memory, I think A Tela meant ‘Of the People’. Though I am quite possibly wrong.

Two: Jaw Jaw Sula. Pronounced: Yaw Yaw Sula. Sula means River or Rapids, named because they’re closer to the rapids.

We took a boat to Jaw Jaw a Tela. It was only an hour long, and it was really pretty.

Then we lugged our luggage around until we got to our little whare looking houses. They actually did look like whares. It was odd to see in the South American jungle.

The kids got the biggest whare/cabin (lucky me, I was the oldest so I got the double bed), Tim and Sian got the second biggest (Henry bunked in with them occasionally) and Mum and Dad got the tiny one.

We learnt how to make cassava bread (delicious, by the way), went caiman spotting, and painted the school (and messed up some of Winnie The Pooh’s arm). We saw tarantulas on a daily basis and Dad poked one with his sunglasses.

We played football with the locals (we had a daily game with the kids from Jaw Jaw Sula, so we swam across the river every day) and watched a big game between Jaw Jaw A Tela and another village I don’t know the name of.

Seriously, that big game was hardcore. We’d walked across the field to get to the school earlier that day, and it was really rough grass. Plus there were random bricks strewn across the field. Most of the players were barefoot. Ouch.

There were extra obstacles, too: children. Pretty much everyone in the whole village came to watch, and of course they brought their toddlers. Kamikaze three year olds kept wandering onto the playing field and the players had to abandon their posts and return said three year old.

Not gonna lie, it was hilarious.

Sian broke her toe (or severely damaged it) while rock hopping over to the calmer river/best rapids, which was really… red.

That same day, Henry got stuck in the toilets, and Mission Impossible began.

Thanks to a ladder, Tim Naulls and Henry Naulls, we were able to get Henry out of the toilets.

Other stuff that happened that I’m not going to go into full detail about:

I had a major allergic reaction to a cat (mostly my fault).
Mum slept in a hammock
‘I want a bowl of pizza’ kept randomly playing at night
We found a frog in the kids’ whare
Henry kept wanting to play Heaphy Sneaky Peeky (“Risk it for the biscuit”)

Cassava bread making (a skill i do not possess)

en route #1

painting the school

preparation for the big football game!

cassava peeling for the cassava bread

walking around with a pineapple on your head, as you do

football spectators make friends!

another day, another tarantula #1

the schools put Colette to sleep ):

the 'dock'

another day, another tarantula #2

A macaw. Chillin'

fishing with sticks

washing up, i think?

more fishing with sticks

the kids whare

making our way through the village back from the river

en route #2

Hen and I

one of our many Heaphy Sneaky Peeky games

en route #3

chaos

the game with the locals of Jaw Jaw Sula

en route #4

a rather hilarious en route picture

En route #5

En route #6

Sitting in the rapids

THE RIVERSIDE PLACE

This isn’t important, it just happened.

The gist of it: we stayed at a hotel that we happen to have pictures of.

perfectly balanced - we were super proud

THE SLOTH SANCTUARY

This is MUCH more interesting than the boring Riverside.

By the way - this sanctuary is not just a sloth sanctuary. It’s also a place for armadillos and anteaters, though they are a rarer occurrence from the shelter.

There are two types of sloths: A three toed and a two toed. The guy told us that he preferred their names to be three-fingered and two-fingered because that was more accurate.

We learnt a lot about sloths (which I’m not going to repeat sorry except for:) and the main thing is that the three fingered/toed are the more relaxed ones, and the two fingered/toed are the more agressive. Also, the three fingered can only eat the leaves of the wild papaya tree, which is both incredibly smart and incredibly dumb. (Smart: nothing else eats that tree. Dumb: those trees aren’t exactly common.) The two fingered eats pretty much everything.

Then they showed us a three-fingered/toed and a two-fingered/toed. They had a resident two fingered/toed that wasn’t agressive because it had been with them for three years (it was found in the outskirts of the city and kept coming back) and always has the choice to leave, but never has. We fed her beans (I think her name was Catrina).

Then we went around the back to see the male three fingered sloth. He’d been rescued recently from his owners - he was a pet (there was fur missing from where they collared him 😔).

Yes, this is a sloth (Catrina)

Beans + sloth = happy catrina

more beans

The male three fingered/toed sloth - the different is incredible

That's part one of Suriname!

We'll be uploading the next as soon as possible.

SURINAME PART 1

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