January 12, 2007
Day 471

The cathedral of SS Peter and Paul.

This being my last day in Suriname, I decided it was time I took a stroll around the capitol. Near my hotel is the only place in the world where you can see a mosque right next to a synagogue. On the other side of town is the government district, where the president's mansion, Ministry of Finance, and numerous other official-looking buildings are scattered around Independence square. There's a lot of trendy bars and restaurants nearby that are packed with Dutch tourists. In most of South America, the locals assume you speak English, but here, they assume you speak Dutch. Not many other nationalities come here.

My stay in Suriname was a good one. I saw a jaguar, floated down a river in a bamboo raft, went to a maroon village, and met a semi-famous athlete in an Amerindian village. Who knows what kind of crazy adventures await in French Guiana?

The photo album for this entry is here.

January 10, 2007
Day 469

Craig sitting under Kumbo Falls.

This morning we did the last walk available, the one to Kumbo Falls. It was another easy, pleasant walk through the jungle, and we even met a few other tourists on the way up. Later, we packed up and headed back down the road towards Brownsweg. We didn't think it would be a good idea to camp in town, so we stopped at a shelter a few K's beforehand. It was a good place to stop because a huge downpour hit us just a few minutes later. We hung out with a bunch of maroon porkknockers, who also wanted to get out of the rain on their motorcycles, until dark.

January 9, 2007
Day 468

Relaxing in my hammock.

This morning we did the most difficult walk of all to Witi Creek. The path went down 450 meters along a ridge to the bottom of the plateau and ended at the creek, which had a nice, clear pool in which to swim. The walk back to the top was steep but no problem once again because I carried very little.

In the afternoon, we walked to the Mazaroni Top Outlook, which provided a good view of the succinctly named Professor W J Ir Blomenstein Lake, also known as the Brokopondo Reservoir, a man-made lake which was created by the formation of the Afobaka dam for the purpose of mining and powering the capitol city of Paramaribo. It was overall another relaxing day in which we took in the beautiful jungle scenery of the Brownsberg Nature Reserve.

January 8, 2007
Day 467

A green frog.

We got up at sunrise from our nice little campsite and made the short walk to the reception desk. The lady told us that we'd be staying in a baboon, which I thought was illegal in this country. Then she informed us that "baboon" was just the name for one of the shelters at the Brownsberg site. It may seem strange that they call the shelter "baboon" when baboons only live in Africa, but that's just the name they call the howler monkey, which is a common animal throughout the Amazon.

We were pleasantly surprised to see that the shelter had a kitchen area with a gas stove, running water, electricity at night, and flushing toilets right next door. Talk about luxury! We set up camp and looked at the maps we were provided for ideas on where to go.

Our first walk was to the Leo and Irene Falls, the latter being named after the military's macho Princess Irene Brigade, which used to go there for exercise. The path took us through the jungle where we saw some agutis, lots of frogs, and a few lizards. Neither of the falls were world-class, but walking there was quite pleasant because I was only carrying my camera and some water.

In the afternoon, we took another walk to Mazaroni Fall, named after the Mazaroni top, one of the two peaks of the Mazaroni plateau. The majority of the trail was on a flat road, but there was a steep part at the end. All of the trails on the site were quite easy to follow.

Today turned out to be an easy, enjoyable day because the area's main attractions were located within a few hours' walking distance of our camping area. Brownsberg is very different from the Kaieteur Falls trek, where the trail was practically nonexistent.

A crab.

The photo album for this entry is here.

January 6, 2007
Day 465

Craig, Yohan, and I met up at the government-run Stinasuu office in Paramaribo today. Getting decent information was like pulling teeth, but eventually we found out that we could book hammock space at the Brownsberg Nature Reserve instead of staying at the expensive lodge. We'll have to walk to the resort from a Maroon village of Brownsweg, and from there, there are several day walks to do.

Eventually we found the bus that goes back and forth between Paramaribo and Brownsweg every day, and after asking dozens of people in the area, the consensus we got was that it left daily at 1:00, although the driver was nowhere to be found. Incredibly, a lot of the people we asked who were working at the shops near the bus knew absolutely nothing about it, even though they are near the place where the bus leaves from every day of their lives. This is one of the biggest differences from the Latin American culture, where fifty guys will tell you everything about a bus before you even walk within two blocks of it.

January 5, 2007
Day 464

I got up on the boat this morning at about 5:00 to find out when the first bus would be leaving for Paramaribo. I got lucky to get Craig and I tickets for the 6:00 bus, and a few hours later, we finally entered the capitol city. So it existed after all, even though we had to circumnavigate the country to get there.

We wanted to stay at the YWCA, but we couldn't find it. Finally, somebody pointed to a burned down building and said that that used to be it. We walked around a bit more and found another hotel in a nice district near the presidential palace. We spent most of the day taking care of tourist business like finding out if we needed visas to enter French Guiana (we didn't) and attempting to get extensions for our Suriname visas (we failed). Paramaribo seemed like a nice city, but I didn't have a chance to do much sight seeing. I ran into Yohan, the Belgian guy I met in Apoera, and it looks like he'll join us for our upcoming trek into Brownsberg Nature Reserve.

January 3, 2007
Day 462

We were told that the Washabo boat (the narrow, overloaded, tipsy boat we came in on) would be leaving at 3:00 this afternoon. However, it rained the entire day, and when the time came for the boat to leave, the driver told me that he couldn't risk going down the river in the bad weather at night. He guaranteed he'd be going at 8:00 tomorrow morning, so the day was lost. I'm glad we didn't try to hitchhike again all day in the rainy weather again, though.