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.

January 2, 2007
Day 461

A jaguar looking back our way.

Craig and I walked to the main road just before dawn to start hitchhiking. We wanted to get to the next town which was 150 K's down the road. We'd still only be halfway to Paramaribo, but we were told that it'd be easy to get a ride once we got to the next town.

It was another long day of waiting. At one point, I thought I heard a car coming. "Only if they've started building cars with jet engines," was Craig's response. Sure enough, it was just an airplane.

Just as we were getting ready to make lunch, Craig happened look down the road and saw something walking across it about 400 meters away. He though it was a jaguar, but I couldn't tell because it was so far away. The animal stopped at the side of the road, so I grabbed my telephoto lens and shot a few pictures. Sure enough, it had the tell-tale spots of a jaguar, the greatest predator of the Amazon, and one of the hardest animals to see.

As long as we had seen the jaguar and it was content to stand on the side of the road, we decided to try to get a bit closer. Slowly, we crept along the side of the road, staying slightly out of its view the entire way. It didn't move away until we were within about 150 meters of it and it slowly walked into the bushes. We kept walking all the way to where it was standing and waited in silence. After a few minutes of standing and waiting, it made a loud rustling noise in the bushes. I was ready with my camera to get a picture of it lunging at us, but Craig let out a huge scream and it ran away. My heart was pounding for the next half hour. I previously had smelled and heard a jaguar in Guyana, but this was my first time actually seeing one, and I still haven't even been eaten!

The rest of the day was filled with uneventful waiting. Once again, not one car passed us the entire day until a truck full of Chinese loggers came up to us looking for mangoes. We helped them get about fifty and they drove us to the turnoff to their camp, a little closer to our goal. However, no other cars came down the road, so we had to give up.

One of the Chinese loggers offered us a ride back to Apoera, and as much as we wanted to try for a ride one more day, we only had enough food left for a meager breakfast, and the fact that there was so little traffic on the road gave us no choice. We had gotten to within 135 K's of the next town, but now we'll have to go all the way back to Apoera, take a boat back to Nickerie, then a bus to Paramaribo, then another bus/hitch to the town, effectively completing a circle around the entire country.

January 1, 2007
Day 460

Craig with his peacock bass.

We started the new year with a long conversation with the resort's owner. He seemed to know everything about Suriname. The main topic of conversation was the civil war of the 1980's. It was started over a bank robbery, and eventually led to a series of coups. The situation became so unstable that the Netherlands cut off all relations with Suriname until democracy was returned in 1991.

Later in the morning, I walked around some more and eventually ran into Craig, who was fishing as usual. Just as I saw him, he was pulling in a large peacock bass, one of the treasures of Amazon fishing. The lady working at the resort gave us a big frying pan, some oil, pepper, and soup cubes, and we picked some limes from one of the trees. We fried it up and had a fantastic lunch, the best-tasting fish I've had in a long time. To finish off the holiday meal, we picked some fresh mangoes for dessert.

In the afternoon, we walked all the way back to the house near the main road and set up camp. We want to give hitchhiking to the next town another shot now that the holiday is over and there will likely be more traffic, so we'll get up early again tomorrow to try to make the most of the daylight hours.

December 31, 2006
Day 459

A pet macaw.

We got up early and started walking through the jungle toward the Blanche Marie resort at dawn. We heard the usual birds and monkeys along the way, but we also found a small poisonous snake in the track. The friendly owner greeted us when we got to the resort a few hours later, but we were a little disappointed to find out that we were the only guests.

I walked all around the resort in the afternoon, the highlight being the Blanche Marie waterfall. It wasn't as amazing an experience as Kaieteur Falls, but it still was a beautiful place to visit. Tonight I was exhausted, there was no TV for the New Year's countdown, and nobody to celebrate with, so I was in bed by 9:00. It was the first New Year's in memory where I wasn't even awake at midnight.

The photo album for this entry is here.