Travel report about Suriname

The Dutch pearl of South America 

First of all why did we pick Suriname ?

To keep it short we talked about it with such a nice guide from Suriname named John, who is a doorman of a great pub in Amsterdam. We had a little smalltalk with him and he recommended to travel to Suriname, because it is such an awesome country. Honestly we haven’t heard much about this small country in South America and we decided to find out ourselves what is going on there.

Where exactly is Suriname and what kind of language do they speak there.

Exactly one year later we started our journey to Suriname to discover one of the greenest and unspoiled countries in the whole world.

Suriname is located in South America at the South East Atlantic Coast surrounded by the countries Guyana, French Guyana and Brazil. For us it was a little bit funny that all local people are speaking Dutch to each other.

We spent our first night in the capital of Suriname, named Paramaribo in the Royal Torarica Hotel, which is really a dream and it is of course located directly in the city centre, so we could walk to all the hotspots. Also our room was great.

Hotel Royal Torarica in Paramaribo

After we reached our hotel we needed a short refreshment. After that, we started directly to discover the small city Paramaribo, which belongs to the world cultural heritage by the way. The city is really cute und small so everything is quite close to each other. For example the I LOVE SURINAME emblem, the St. Petrus and Paulus Cathedral and the palace of the president. 

I (WE) LOVE SURINAME

Palace of the president

For us it was really surprising how clean and modern the city is, especially when you compare it to other countries. What is really great is that everything is not so crowed  because the whole country has only 500 000 inhabitants and another 350 000 live abroad, most of them in the Netherlands.

And guys what is  sooo great, only 5 percent of the country is populated the  other 95 percent is only nature and jungle so it´s a real paradise for „nature lovers“. 

People from Suriname love to party and go out and enjoy their life! Actually  we only wanted to go out for one or two beers… but the sound of a music band close to our pub made us really curious.. So we decided to go there. The name of the pub was ,,Lekker Chillen”. That place was „rocking“, everybody was wearing great traditional clothes. For us it was really amazing to see all these people so happy, dancing and celebrating. Actually we only  wanted to go out  for a short time, but we spent the whole night in the pub and met so many nice people. It was an unforgettable great night! 

After only 3 hours of sleep, we had to put all our stuff together, because our guide Sensi was picking us up at our hotel.

The Ladies in typical local dress

Our Partycrew from the Club “Lecker Chillen”

We had so much fun with these lovely guys…

     ,“ Please don´t do it like we did“

Do not travel to Suriname at the end of the dry season, it is not the best time to travel through the jungle by boat.

But before we started our tour, we stopped at the Atjoni village where we had great food at Tante Anna´s Keuken!

Bastie with “Tante Anna” and her sweetiii

After our lunch we started our tour with a small boat and 8 local people. We didn’t´t know how hard this trip was going to be. Sensi our lovely guide told us, it will be a long way and we will get stuck in the river a lot of times because the water level was extremely low.

OMG it was a hard ride for sure, we had to get out of the boat a lot of times and sometimes we had to take all our stuff out and carry everything over the rocks and of course we had to carry the boat as well. It took us about ten hours to reach our first camp! The last 30 min were extremely difficult for us, because it was already dark. After all  – a really great adventure!

Don´t miss the door

Low water level

Nice view

Barney on tour

The first night we spent at the nice Apiappaati Lodge. We had a great night there.  Sensi prepared a delicious dinner for us. Our room was a small wooden hut with two clean beds and a mosquito net, for one night absolutely ok.

Apiappaati Lodge

Basti´s new best friend Sensiiiiiii

sweeetiiii girl

On the next day our plan was to start a two day jungle trip. We were so excited, because the jungle is in the middle of nowhere.

No mobile phone signal, no shower and no other people, but a lot of wild animals everywhere around us. That is how a real aborigine must feel like. We used the river as a shower and prepared our meals over an open fire. 

For our protection we had a gun with us. Luckely we did not need to use it.

The Jungle Camp

Basti is testing the hammock

Fishermen paradise

           ,, We had soooooo much luck ,,

But the best was –  we saw the JAGUAR and a swimming SLOTH! Our guides couldn’t  believe it at all .. The king of the jungle was laying on a rock, staring at us. This feeling was soooo  incredible and made us all speechless .. 

We had so much time to admire the jaguar and take pictures of him. Our guide has been working in the tourism branch for 15 years and he has never seen the jaguar so close and for such a long time. Really incredible ….!

As it was getting dark in the evening, all the crocodiles were climbing up on the rocks around us. We could see their eyes reflecting, by using our flashlights. Creepy but awesome!

The K I N G of jungle… <3

The swimming sloth

  ,, Thats the real jungle life ,,

To get a better overview we walked another 5 hours through the deep jungle. There are so many poison animals, that we were not aware of. The bite of a big ant can be very dangerous if you don’t get help soon! You also have a lot of poisonous snakes and for example poisonous blue frogs that could kill you in a minute. Furthermore the jungle had a lot of colorful birds and monkeys.

You have the perfect view here on this point after 5 hours walk…

Beautiful green landscape

 Suriname and the local people 

Of course we wanted to know how the real locals live. So we spent the last night in the Kosindo Lodge. In this village most of the life is going on outside, they are using their small little huts only for cooking and sleeping. Electricity was only available for a couple of hours before sunset, powered by a compressor.

Traditionally they were still cleaning the dishes in the river. It is really nice how people deal with each other.

All the people are looking so happy, the children are playing football and the women are doing the daily housework (often topless) and the men are doing some craftwork or working on the plantations to earn money.

The locals living along the Suriname River are eating almost only self grown plants and fruits from the palm trees.

Conclusion

Suriname is a such a fantastic country! Especially for nature lovers it is the best! Unfortunately we only spent a week in Suriname what was absolutely to short. We are  coming back for sure and will stay for a longer time. We had a lot of fun and that trip is in our top 10 of countries we have ever visited!!!

The only thing that we would maybe do different next time is to fly to the lodges instead of taking a boat.

There are a lot of small airfields close to the lodges. The tour by boat was really fucking awesome but not for 12 hours.

Infobox

Hotel:

Royal Torarica

Visa:

Visafree, but you need a tourist card. You get it directly from the airport for 25 US Dollar

Currency:

Suriname Dollar SRD

The current course you can look up at Oanda

Language:

Dutch

English

Local language

Local Time:

You can read the local times here

High Season:

The best time for the Suriname here

Health:

Malaria:
You should looking for a doctor and tell him, which country you visit in the next time.
Malariaprophylaxe is very expensive but the health insurance will pay for it.

Yellow fever:
Yellow fewer is very important. Even this will be paid by the health insurance.
Please tell them the situation.
Vaccination card must be available for the entry

Hepatitis:
Check your vaccination card from the doctor. The health insurance will pay for that.

You can read more about this here

Safety:

You can find all entry requirements at the listed embassies

Embassy:

For US Embassy: link
For UK Embassy: link
For AUS Embassy: link

Information about the tour guide

Name:

Sensi Majokko

Language:

English

Dutch

Contakt:

smajokko@hotmail.com

About Sensi 

Thank you so much for the awesome trip through the deep jungle. You made our trip unforgettable and we will never forget this indescribable moment with the jaguar. Sensi, it was a real fun and cool trip with you and you are a great guide. We can recommend you more than 100 %. We are coming back for sure!

Saskia and Basti