Paramaribo, Suriname

While waiting for the ferry to leave for Suriname, we sat in the shade and chatted to a few of the passengers. A Surinamese man from our minivan had a return ferry ticket for three people but his friends stayed in Guyana so he invited us to join him on his ticket.We had no problems with immigration unlike the girl the minivan driver was flirting with. She did not have a yellow fever vaccination certificate so she was shut out. There was a sign informing everyone that from November everyone would have to carry their certificates so it seemed unfair as it is only July.

The man with the group ticket said he has to evangelise every time he can so he started to preach to a group near him. They spoke Creole and it was so interesting listening to a language that sounded like broken English mixed with Amerindian, African, Dutch and Indian languages, and trying to figure out what they were saying.

We met a lady who was born in Guyana but lived in the Netherlands with her Dutch husband.. She was going to catch up with her niece and family in Suriname. She told us how disappointed she was to miss out on getting a British passport as she was born a few weeks before the British left Guyana. She had not known about the cut off date by which she had to apply for the passport so she missed out. For some reason it seemed important to her.

Her niece spoke excellent English, having come from Guyana, and said her children taught her French when they started school in Suriname and she also spoke Portuguese as her neighbours were from Brazil and had learnt Dutch to get by in Suriname.

We met Maggie who was born in Guyana but lives in New York. She had spent some time catching up with her family in Georgetown and was off to visit an aunt in Suriname. She had only been back twice and seemed very unsure about what to do to esnure she would get to her aunt's place. Luckily the evangelist took her under his wing and reassured her at each step of the way.

After 3 hours we were on the ferry and heading to Suriname. The Suriname immigration office had two lanes. One was for residents and 60+, and the other for non-residents. We were able to whizz through the shortest queue as there were so many non-residents including large groups of young Chinese people.

After being stamped in we were confronted with a huge steel gate and a guard. On the other side of the gate were hordes of men screaming for our attention as they had taxis or minivans to take passengers to different places and once full they would head off. Our minivan ticket covered us all the way to Paramaribo and it didn't take long for us to find our van and driver.

Most of the road was sealed to Paramaribo with more rice fields and sugarcane plantations. We passed several people fishing in the drains beside the road. Every small village we passed through had a Chinese supermarket or a Chinese value store which was quite surprising. Most of the houses were on stilts and wooden. Cows grazed the drains between the road and the plantation.

At a police check point we all got out and chatted to a man from the van who lives in Trinidad and Tobago and he said he used to play cricket for Trinidad. He gave us some sugared tamarind and a green fruit that looked like a lychee. He also sneaked off behind the police shed to do 'business' with one of the policemen.

The minivan dropped us at the apartment building we had booked into. The owner had already put the aircon on to cool the room as it was 29C outside. He had a welcome basket of bread, cheese, margarine, dried banana chips, cassava chips, and peanuts. There was also a bowl of papaya, oranges and bananas. In the fridge were eggs, juice, soft drinks and mineral water. The most customer focused place we have encountered in South America. There was a Chinese supermarket down the street and it was a 20 minute walk to the city centre.

We spent a few days walking around the UNESCO World heritage city centre. The Church is the tallest wooden building in South America.

We went to the Zeelandia Fort to learn about the different groups in Suriname in the museum inside.

There are hardly any ATMs here and the limit is very low. Luckily we carry three cards so can get three times the limit. We also discovered we can use a different machine and take the limit out from that too.

There are migrants from East India, called Hindustanis, and comprise 37 per cent of the population. This statue commemorates them. There are also 31 per cent Creole (those of mixed European and African). The Javanese (Indonesian) make up 15 per cent, while 10 per cent are Maroon (Bush Negro). Even though Dutch is the official language we heard Sranan Tongo (Surinamese Creole) spoken more often. There are lots of Dutch families here on holiday at present too.

This old building reminded us of buildings in Luang Prabang.

We managed to find the Trinidad and Tobago Honarary Consulate in Paramaribo and John spent a lot of time getting all the paperwork together for avisa for Lil. We couldn't believe how much information they wanted before giving me a visa. I needed colour copies of my passport, an extra photo, copies of two months of transactions from our bank accounts, copies of our credit cards, accommodation booking confirmed in Port of Spain, a flight to Trinidad, an itinerary of our stay, a flight onward - they wouldn't accept our itinerary from US to NZ, a yellow fever vaccination certificate and US $50 (non-refundable). Is Trinidad a place where people want to overstay?

We walked through the Palm garden every day and one day saw men using a nail gun to put wooden shingles on the roof of a building there. It didn't take long to re do it. The next day we saw that the whole building had collapsed as the centre beam gave way and they were back rebuilding it.

Once we had the visa information on its way for approval to Trinidad we booked to do a tour to see turtles or hatchlings. We were joined by a Catalan lady from Barcelona and her Dutch husband and two children. She spoke Catalan to the children and he spoke Dutch. The children go to a British school so speak English and the parents speak English to each other. They live and work in Rio de Janeiro. When the children play imaginative games they speak in Portuguese. They were visiting their Dutch friend who works in Paramaribo and also joined us.

On the boat trip we passed may poles in the water where fishermen from Guyana came to net the river. They have constructed a small community of huts where they stay for several weeks at a time.

Our guide brought us an Indian chicken curry and roti dinner which we ate on the sandbar while watching the sunset.  We walked up and down the beach but missed a turtle that saw bright lights from the huts and scooted back into the sea. We never got to see hatchlings either and expected that the dogs roaming the beach would have dug up a few eggs.

We now have to take a ferry to French Guiana and will spend a few days there while we wait for our Trinidad and Tobago visa to be issued.

Georgetown, Guyana

Luckily we had internet access at Iwokrama Rainforest Lodge so we could chat with Kerri and Tyler and catch up with the goings on in Papamoa. We were also able to let our reserved accommodation in Georgetown know what was happening. Iwokrama is organised from an office in Georgetown - problems happen when decisions are made a long way from where the action is.

We had an early night's sleep but were woken even earlier when the fan stopped in the early hours as the solar batteries ran out of stored power. We got our gear organised with head lights and had an early breakfast of sardines, okra and eggplant and rice.

We met the van at the police check point and checked in before crossing on the ferry.

The minivan had a two seats for us and a few Brazilians and and 4 children. The driver was an elderly man who drove carefully. We stopped at a cafe for what we thought was a breakfast stop at 9am but later found out it was in fact the lunch break we were told to expect. We didn't eat, but the other passengers bought chicken and rice dishes in take away styrofoam containers. I watched the BBC news on their huge screen while the driver tightened up a few loose bits under the van.

A few men got off at a logging camp where a group of young girls rushed the van selling sweets. It rained on and off and the road was potholed a lot worse than the first section from Brazil.

The other passengers managed to sleep all crunched up on the terrible road and one lady consoled herself by reading her enormous bible study book.

Several old beaten up logging trucks passed us on the road adding to the huge ruts and turning the road edges into slush. A few 4 wheel drive vehicles were also on the road and one stopped to shoot some of the animals in the trees.

There were signs about unauthorized mining in the rain forest and we saw several workers on their bicycles heading between camps. It took nine and a half hours to do the first 106 kms and one and a quarter to do the last 106 on the sealed section from Linden to Georgetown. Linden is a bauxite and aluminum producing town with several abandoned mines and lots of old factories.

We caught a taxi to our B & B with a lovely tropical garden and a friendly helpful hostess. Sayaeda, is known as the local animal rights activist in town. She had been to the market and spotted a sloth jammed into a small cage and up for sale. She told the seller off and took the sloth away and refused to pay for it. She left the sloth at the zoo and then organised a flower farmer friend to take it and release it back into the wild. She invited us along to see the sloth at the zoo before it headed off.

While waiting for her to be interviewed by the local newspaper we watched the manatee or dugong eating lawn clippings in its pool and children coming with handfuls of grass to feed them. Apparently they have been in the pond since 1885. We didn't see them come out of the water and just saw their mouths sucking in the grass covering the pond.

Georgetown is below sea level and has a concrete wall surrounding it to keep the water from the city but it also has stinky rubbish strewn drains everywhere. It is popular for joggers to charge along and walkers to stroll on top of the sea wall.

Back at Sayaed's Rain Forest B 7 B we met a couple of women from New York. One was born in Guyana and left when she was 10 and was back to see how things had changed. This year Guyana celebrated 50 years of independence and there were signs and posters everywhere advertising this fact. We were also joined by a group of anthropologists from Germany, and Brazil who were working on various projects. We ordered a pizza for dinner and stayed in as the city is not safe at night.

We had a busy time walking about the city to get money from the Canadian bank, Scotia Bank. They are the only bank to accept foreign credit cards and have a very small daily limit and charge far too much for the privilege. There are numerous wooden building in Georgetown and some of them are really huge. A lot are badly in need of a paint job
.

Our second task was to get a visa for Suriname and luckily the embassy was not far from the B & B. Once we got there we saw a sign telling us that they have a dress code. John had to return home to put on long pants. Several Cubans arrived by taxi to get their visas and had strappy tops on so they had to take turns sharing a tee shirt before the security lady would even let them in, one at a time. I processed my forms while John was away and then was told we needed passport photos. This information was not on their information sign outside so John had to take another walk back to the B & B. He had wanted to enter on his British passport as a visa is not needed for Suriname but when she asked for his entry stamp there wasn't one as he entered on his NZ one.So, another trip back to the B & B  and she wouldn't let him use his UK one and he had to pay and use his NZ one. We had to return in the afternoon to pick the passports up so at least it only took a few hours to process everything.

We walked about town to a book shop looking for a guide book to the Caribbean Islands but were unlucky and had to buy and download ebooks instead. The internet was slow and there were several power cuts so it took a long time to get done. We had decided that we would like to look at a few Caribbean islands as we had time to use that had been allocated for Venezuela, but with the dire economic situation there we are not going. We have read that subsidised food is being taken to Colombia where it is being sold for a profit and the farmers who are producing the subsidised food are not getting enough money to cover costs so they have stopped growing rice and sugar. People cannot get enough food and some are buying goods online from the US. Life is desperate there.

When we started researching, we found we needed a visa for Trinidad and Tobago so found an address and headed off to get that sorted but found the honarary consulate was no longer in town. We decided that we would get the visa in Suriname as we tried all the leads we found online but they were often contradictory.

We enjoyed the anthropological museum and its displays of the Amerindian tribes lifestyles and rituals. They had school children outside learning how to make pottery using the coil method.

One evening we got a taxi to a shopping mall on the outskirts of the city where ate at a Syrian refugee's shwarma stall. The Peace Corp lady recommended it so we decided to give it a go. The mall was huge with a movie theatre and a food court. Nearby were the beautifully laid out buildings for CARICOM , a political and economic Caribbean group. There were quite a number of Muslim women eating in the centre too.

We were picked up at 5am by the minibus to go to Paramaribo in Suriname. We stopped at few addresses to pick up people but we only had about 5 people. The driver raced along at 45 kms over the speed limit through towns with dogs, donkeys and cows on the road. He took risks squeezing in vehicles when overtaking and John told him off. Fortunately, he slowed down but still flirted with the girl next to him and showed her stuff on his cell phone while driving. No only did the ride remind us of a similar experience in Madagascar but so too did the landscape. There were wooden houses on stilts surrounded by rice paddies. Some of the concrete houses were huge with patterned archways that looked like each neighbour was trying to beat the next with their intricate arch patterns.

We arrived at 9am at the ferry and immigration office thankful that we were in one piece!

Iwokrama, Guyana

On our last night in Manaus we met a Peace Corp worker who gave us a lot of tips for visiting Guyana as she had spend several months working there.

We caught a night bus to Boa Vista and checked into a business hotel at 11am. The receptionist wanted some extra money if we wanted to go to our room as check in was not until noon. We said we would wait and after consulting the owner we were allowed to check in to our cell like room and cool off in the air conditioning.

It was a Monday and a swelteringly hot day. We searched for a restaurant to get something to eat but they were all closed. We found a store that sold bulk items and managed to find something to eat for breakfast.  At the hotel was a flier for takeaways so we got the receptionist to order us a lasagne for dinner. It arrived by motorbike 20 minutes later.

In the morning we caught up on our laundry and were told off by the receptionist for hanging it on the hotel clothes line. There is nothing to see or do in Boa Vista so we used the time to catch up on emails and the blog before catching a bus the two hours to the town of Bonfim and the Guyana border.

At the small border we met a couple of young women from Guyana and shared a taxi with them over the border to the Guyana border town of Lethem where we had our vaccination certificates checked for yellow fever and got a 30 day visa. It was back into another taxi and a change to the other side of the road for the driver as Guyana was a British colony and drive on the left.

We were booked into the Iwokrama River Lodge and as part of our deal with them they were to organise our transport and include it in our package. Once at the minibus depot we were told the bus had gone an hour before we arrived even though we understood we would have to hang around until midnight for our reserved seats. Within an hour we had gathered enough people wanting a minibus to Georgetown so we all piled in and headed off to be checked over again by the police before leaving the small border town. We had hoped to be able to get out some cash from the local bank for Guyana during our long wait but headed off without much local money. John was able to change our last Brazilian Reals for some loose change. We are carrying American dollars and it seems it is easy to use them if needed.

The roads in Guyana are unsealed, potholed and narrow with small rough sawn wooden plank bridges over the creeks, so the trip is slow and rough. We drove through the savannah lands and saw several savannah foxes on the road as well as a couple of peccary. The Toyota Hiace was jam-packed with everyone's gear stuffed into every crevice and after about three and a bit hours we got out to have dinner at a restaurant bar. There was a small menu of chicken and chips and chicken chow mien as well as some pies. Locals were watching cricket on a big screen while four men were playing dominoes and drinking beer.

The driver hurried us along and after a 15 minute drive we pulled up to a place that had two shelters with people in hammocks. We queued to hire a hammock and were told to quickly get set up as another minibus had arrived and there would not be enough space or hammocks for everyone. We couldn't really understand what was happening but Rannila and her friend tried their best to update us. John joined the snorers and I tossed and turned in my too small hammock next to some men who yakked on all night.

At 3.30 we were woken and taken a short drive to a police check point where five other minivans were also waiting. Rannila told us the road is closed to traffic from 4pm to 4am so vehicles did not hit the wildlife from the forest reserves but we were later told the road was closed to stop poachers taking the animals during the night. After another police passport and vaccination certificate check we all continued on our way. Us to Iwokrama and the rest to Georgetown.

We were picked up by a driver from Iwokrama and after a shower we had breakfast and spent the rest of the day resting.

Dining room and offices

Our lodge

Iwokrama Forest Reserve is a 460 square kilometre rain forest and home to 474 species of birds, 130 different mammals, 420 types of fish and 132 species of reptiles. The lodge is on the banks of the Essequibo river. As well as organising river trips and walks it is used by scientists for research. There was a group of students from Guyana, UK and USA on our first day here.

We did an evening boat ride on the river and saw an iguana resting on a branch above the river. Our guide, Teechi said it rests there so it can leap into the river from danger. A black caiman lurked in the shallows but we were only able to see its glittering eyes. Red rump agoutis romped under the cabins and a few nightjar birds huddled amongst the leaves for the night.

The next day we drove 90 minutes to a canopy walk where we had a different guide and were the only guests there. It is coming to the end of the rainy season so there are not many guests. September is when the place is really popular.

The canopy was built a Canadian engineer and recently a third of it collapsed when a tree blew over in the wind and brought some of the walkway down. We saw a troop of howler monkeys come through. They stopped at some fruiting trees and spat out the seeds which were then picked up by huge curasow birds on the forest floor. We saw about a dozen different birds and are getting better at picking them out in the tops of the trees.
                                                             

A walking palm

Rose flower

When we arrived back at the lodge there was a huge group of 60 Dutchies. They had shipped vehicles to Suriname and were driving to Rio. Some were going to the Olympic Games while others were visiting other places before shipping the vehicles back from Rio. It didn't take them long to empty the fridge of cold beers. They were up at 4am after a night of thunder, lightning and heavy rain and caught the car ferry across the river and headed for Lethem. A company organises the trips and some of them went from Usuhaia in Tierra del Fuego to Alaska last year.

The Dutchies

After they left we did a boat ride around a nearby island and saw more howler monkeys and lots of new birds; bat falcons, black necked aracari, white throated toucan, herons, swallows and swifts. We came back for breakfast and then headed to climb Turtle mountain a 300 metre hill.

Spider monkey

When we got to the top we had a great forest view and below us were spider monkeys drying out after last night's rain.

On the way down Teechi and I stepped over a poisonous fer-de-lance or lancehead snake (according to Wikipedia it is also known as 'the ultimate pit viper'), while John spotted it curled up flickering its tongue.

Leaf cutter ants' nest

Teechi's well trained eyes spotted a tiny frog no bigger than my thumb nail.

 We disturbed a couple of red and green macaws and red fan parrots.

 A shy capuchin monkey scurried away when we heard it rustling leaves. Teechi told us about the uses of the different forest trees including one that was used to poison arrowheads. On the boat ride back we saw turtles resting on dead logs just above the water but they toppled is as we approached. After dinner we went upstream to see some 6000-8000 year old petroglyphs on the river rocks and got to see some squirrel monkeys nearby.

Bat falcon

We had booked the minibus to pick us up at the checkpoint at 6am to continue onto Georgetown but when it arrived it was full and the driver knew nothing about our reservation. This meant we had to hang around the lodge all day and stay another night and hopefully it will all work out the next day as we have reserved accommodation in Georgetown.

Manaus, Brazil

It was a  short hour-long flight from Santarem to Manaus. We had booked a transfer through our hostel as we were arriving in the dark, so taxied smoothly into the centre of the city of four million.

The hostel was strangely set out. Our room was by a terrace at the end of a flight of outside stairs. Unfortunately the smokers liked to congregate around midnight and yabber loudly. The room was comfortable enough but the common spaces were stinking hot even with the fans on.

It was a short walk to the main square by the opera house. We went to a free show of folk dancing accompanied by the philharmonic orchestra on our first night. they had two more nights of free performances. The theatre seemed smaller inside than the one in Belem. We forgot the camera so didn't get any shots of the inside.

The restaurants had tables outside so we could  watch the goings on in the square.

One afternoon there was zumba to a LOUD live band. Another time there were artists with their creations on easels, a blow up pink dolphin, and children playing games.

We took a day bus tour of the city with our translator Lucy. Her English was dreadful but she did her best. The tour was to get an overview of the huge city. We saw some of the houses owned by the rich rubber barons and they are now museums.

The Amazonas Stadium where some of the last World Cup Football games were held. nearby it was a Carnaval school and the point where the parades begin during Carnaval.

The Punte Negra bridge now opens up access to the other side of the river. There was a checkpoint on the other side where the police checked for drugs coming from Peru and Colombia.

We stopped for ice creams at the Rio Negra beach where a LOUD band was playing as part of a baptism ceremony. It was overlooked by new and middle class looking high rise apartments. Quite a flash area.

On another day we did a tour  to see the meeting of the waters. It is a place where the River Negro meets River Salimoes.

The rivers have different temperatures and ph levels and carry different materials so they have different colours. It takes 17 kilometres before the two colours mix.

There was a Russian woman and a German family on the boat trip and we got our commentary in English which was great.

We went by a floating village. The houses are on huge native timber logs that has a toxic sap that burns the skin.

We stopped at a floating souvenir shop and they had some captive sloths.

an anaconda

and caiman

 that people rushed to pose with and gave the locals a donation for the privilege.

There was a pool where you could buy fish and try to lift up the huge river fish as it sucked, as it does not have teeth, the bait off the rope. It made a loud noise as it sucked the fish.

We headed to another part of the river and some people swam with the pink dolphins.

We ate at a floating restaurant and visited the huge water lilies watched by the monkeys.

From here we took a night bus to Boa Vista and will go onto Bonfim heading out of Brazil to Guyana.Ciao ciao Brazil.