A Girl in Guyana and Suriname

I have spent the last week in the jungle, and as my Dutch hostesses say, “We are back in civilization.” Not that life is bad where we are staying. Anne and Lieke, two girls I met while studying abroad in Holland two years ago, are doing their internships (writing efficiency reports) at a resort about an hour and a half from Paramaribo (the capitol city of Suriname). I met up with them at the airport as Anne’s boyfriend Ferdinand was flying in from Amsterdam. It was so nice to see a familiar face for the first time in 2 weeks. And 3 familiar faces… even better! The drive out to the resort was mostly down a red, dirt road with plenty of bumps and puddles along the way. We spent the first night catching up and enjoying the beautiful veranda at their house. I was even introduced to Joris (they pronounce it Yoris) the caiman, as Lieke spotted him with the giant spotlight… he was floating in the river just off the veranda.

The next morning, we were all hanging out on the veranda, and all of a sudden we heard monkeys swinging in the trees across the little river from us. In the two months the girls have been here, they’ve only seen monkeys out there once before, and they were told they were very lucky to see them once!

We had a barbeque on the beach on Saturday night with some of the girls’ coworkers. That night we ended up swimming in the water with no nets to protect us from the pirhanas. My friends told me there were no nets after the swim, of course.

The girls have to work during the day, sometimes at the house typing up their reports, but sometimes they are off on the resort filling in where they’re needed and observing the staff. Ferdinand and I have become partners in crime when we’re left alone. One day we had a mad cleaning session where we did dishes, swept the porch, and washed our laundry by hand. We spend some of the day sunbathing on the private beach next to the house and swimming when we get too hot. (By the way, my 2 rashes are going away thanks to all the sunlight it’s getting! I’m sure you’re all happy to hear that.) There are two hammocks on the veranda which we frequent often, and I’ve become addicted to Sudoku, the number game.

We ventured back into Paramaribo yesterday to see what civilization is like 😉 Actually, we had to run a few errands. We visited the Leatherman… that’s what Anne and Lieke call him… he makes anything you can think of out of leather. We’re stopping in to visit him next week to have sandals made just for our feet and to share a few beers. We also had to reserve a tour for next week. The four of us were thinking about going to Raleighvallen and Voltzberg, but after a few calls around and a stop at a tour-operator, we were convinced to go on a 5-day overland trip to Blanche Marie, a better waterfalls to visit at this time of year. We’ll be traveling by jeep and doing lots of different activities.

And an update on my plans for the end of February… I just bought an airline ticket from NYC to Berlin, leaving the 20th of Feb and returning from Amsterdam on the 28th of February. Crazy, I know. But it’s the only opportunity I will have to see my German friends (whom I haven’t seen in 2 years already) for another year or so, and I’ve decided not to do the cruise thing on my own in the Caribbean, which means I’m probably actually saving money by going to Europe 🙂

We leave for our big trip next Monday the 30th of Jan, and we will return on that Friday. I don’t know how much email contact I’ll have for the next few weeks… so I hope everyone is doing well, and thanks for the comments… they really put a smile on my face.

Tags: South America, Suriname, Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2006 at 10:40 pm and is filed under Suriname, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.