It was early in the morning at 2.45 AM when the alarm clock woke us the first time. Longhair the taxi driver then told us he would only be there by four… Four hours later we crossed the border river by  the replacement ferry. First contact with dutch creole. Indians, Muslims, blacks, Indonesian, Christians, Hindus, Chinese, it would seem like with that much mix racism has to give way to tolerance, what I hear is that it unfortunately doesn’t


After the border it already felt like Holland because of the flatness…

Parimaribo is a very pretty capital city, with loads of wild wild west movie feeling




Our first Hotel in Parimaribo was no good choice, a Cuban who had problems speaking Spanish and an Indian who knew everything better. We almost had to break the front door by knocking before anyone opened ‚the hotel‘. Reviews Nic, reviews! There were none…

On the way into the interior to visit the Maroons, the black slaves who flew here and who themselves consider indigenous by now!

Sorrel, or ‚flor de Jamaica‘, wie dieser Strauch und diese Blüte in Kolumbien heisst, lekker geschmakelig!

Casava (sur.) – Maniok (bras.) – Yukka (col.) Fladenbrot

Mit Bank im Zentrum dieses 3000 Menschen Dorf

Es waren mal fünf Guyanas, Venezuela und Brasilien haben sich zwei davon ‚unter den Nagel gerissen‘.

Lau leidet an einer Grippe

Back in Paramaribo, can’t get enough of this western movie houses!


Bushalte *stelle…

In Einheit und Harmonie
Arbeiten an dem Aufbau vom uns geliebten Surinam
(to read dutch is fairly easy for me, but when them speaking it’s a different story…)

Fire? Call 110!

Synagogue next to the mosque

Looking for a place to buy?

I expected the dutch neighbor of Guyana to be similar. Because in the end there would be a similar story one would think. And these countries are relatively small. But not at all! Less Indians (from India), but more Javanese people (from Java, Indonesia). And the official language is dutch, and again a mix of all kinds of languages and religions. The Maroons are the ex slaves who flew into the interior of the country and they are considered – also by their definition – Natives. In their ‘story’ they have been living long enough here to have ‘merged to be indigenous’, weird definition! And not so much Indian food anymore, now we have interestingly enough also Indonesian cuisine in the mix. The slightly spicy peanut sauce brought me right back to Indonesia!

And apart of dutch ‘obviously’ they wouldn’t be considered a Caribbean country if they wouldn’t have their proper Creole, a mix of dutch, english and a bit of the Maroon language (I think…). And then there are the Chinese, controlling all the mini, maxi and super markets. There are the old Chinese (here since many generations) and the new Chinese (here only a decade or two) to make the mix even more diffuse. It’s another incredible microcosmos of their own history. Mixing into the blend in the newer timeline also some Venezolanos, Cubans and Brasileños. And everyone brings a bit of his culture (dining and otherwise) with him. They don’t mix much between the races, especially not short term – but in the long run there will always be some kind of unity, of identification with the other ethnic groups as a country. It’s like a lost world. It’s like very international and at the same time very isolated: It’s the Guyanas!

After sampling some wild wild west feeling in Paramaribo (are you looking for a western movie town – this is it!), we were heading into the interior to get to know a little bit the Maroons. Just a little bit, because it was an organized tour. There was a big group of elderly dutch people (the main tourists in Suriname, around 90%) and on our group there were four ‘padres’, priests, one from the states on his 66 birthday and three Brazilians – first baby steps of trying to understand Brazilian. It will confuse me badly with my Spanish within the next two month to come, it is very similar! Organized tours are good for relaxing, but the isolation factor from the real life is a big price you pay for a little more comfort and a little more privacy. Well actually a lot more privacy (you can comfortably stay within your comfort zone). But we really needed it, we are in our fifth month of traveling and the first symptoms of fatigue are showing. It’s important to keep up a certain balance, so it keeps being enjoyable. The risk of just moving about, and unwinding the planned route without really enjoying every moment of it always lures after too many nights of bad sleep or too many hours on buses, boats or planes…

Suriname definitely feels more civilized compared to Guyana. Less hostile, I don’t feel the strong energy from the afro community like in all the other Caribbean countries – it seems we are are slowly transcending into a new region: The Amazon!

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Tomorrow we are already heading to the next destination: French Guyana – the last of the Guyanas, actually it’s France, so we will ‚innestappen‘ into the EU and dutch will give way to français….

Bataga Wojo, them street name of  them taxi driver, will pick us up at eight and then we will circle the streets till we find another five passenger to leave for the boarder. Till eleven, after that he will leave also if he didn’t filled the cap. Two hours to Albina, the border village in Suriname. Another ferry will get us to French Guyana, where we will stay in the border town of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. And from where will have a river tour up the Maroni river the next day – then I think we had enough river tours for some time… We wanted to have some event also in French Guyana, the tour is actually in french (what else – they are proud to french of course). There is not much to do in French Guyana and everything is very expensive. We will most possibly not stay much time there, but I didn’t wanted to just rush through without giving this place a minimum amount of time to acquire some sorts of feeling for it, like maybe a week.