What do people from Surinam look like? We’ll get back to the question further down. And here’s how we experience a fascinating mix of culture, taste spicy food and listen to Dutch all along! And still looking for caimans…
Domburg’s River Breeze
We arrive in front of the buoyed channel of the Surinam River just in time to slip into the shelter of the river with the tide still rising. It is nearly dark when we drop the anchor. With the rising tide the following day we carry on another 20 nautical miles upriver (4 hours), passing by a WW2 big wreck in the middle of the river.
The (mainly) Dutch sailors already anchored at the marina in Domburg give us a warm welcome by helping to tie us up to a buoy, which is tricky, especially with a strong current. And later we meet up with all of them at the “marina’s” River Breeze restaurant for a Pizza and a beer, which becomes nearly our second home for a couple of weeks.
To the boys delight, the Domburg Marina has a pool, where they spend a lot of time in, although sometimes in the rain. Many times, I have to wait for them to end a water fight with Daddy, trying (rather unsuccessfully!) to drown him. They swallow a lot of water…
When the sailing is boring, like when motor-sailing up a river, there’s time for relaxing moments… 
… or beauty care! 
A ship wreck from WW2 in the middle of the Surinam river, at Paramaribo. Why remove it? 
With our foresail out, upriver with the tide rising, we pass under the bridge at Paramaribo. Arriving in a new country, sailors fly the visiting country courtesy flag and the “Q-flag” (showing that we’ve not yet gone through customs) on starboard. 
The river water is even muddier than in the Para river, but these floating water hyacinths are very happy. After examining a little bunch, we let it swim along again. 
This is the colour of the river water in a white toilet bowl – no poo in it, I swear! On the other hand, at night at sea, when flushing with sea water, we sometimes see the fluorescent plankton in the toilet bowl 😃 
Toads and frogs love hanging around all over the place. Not surprising with all the rain and puddles. 
At the Domburg Marina: The blue water of the pool was irresistable. We even managed to get a photo in nice weather! 
The River Breeze Restaurant belongs to the Domburg Marina. 
Delightful Bitterballs! Ask any Dutchman, they will tell you about them! 
Karaoke evening at the River Breeze. Great evening with boat neighbours.
Getting around
Difficult without cash!… The European credit cards being very scarcely accepted in shops or restaurants, we need to get cash from “holes in the wall”. Problem: we arrive just when wages are paid. Consequence: either ten’s of people are queuing to get cash or, the dispenser is empty! When we finally get one, we discover that the machine accepts to give only 4’000.- Surinam Dollars (103.- £, 118.- CHF) at a time… in banknotes of 100 SRD (2.58 £, 2.96 CHF). So, when you get cash, you feel in your pocket or in your wallet that you were successful in your chase…
So, loaded with cash, we rent a car for the following days. We’re not sure if our business orientated car renter isn’t just renting his own or his neighbour’s cars… Not ever did we get a car in that state – but it rolls😉.
Driving on the wrong side of the road, we take on the challenge of the narrow, bumpy and quite often mud roads, We explore the region and Surinam’s capital Paramaribo on several days. The famous and extraordinary wooden cathedral and the Fortress in Paramaribo are really worth the visit. We also go to the market and he historical centre which’s architecture looks a bit like in the Netherlands adding some rather worn colonial style houses in between modern (rather ugly) buildings.
We just loved the roads in Surinam: full of surprises! 
Do you know what a DREMPEL is? We found out quickly! Sleeping policemen (speed bumps) are all over, even when the road is already so bumpy you can’t possibly speed. And what was the speed limit in Surinam? 
Typical picture in the villages: water ditch beside the road, little bridge leading over the ditch to the house, the rubbish disposal for each house or group of houses. 
Surinam Dollars, a pile of money that doesn’t fit in your wallet. 
How to transport oranges 
The typical wooden houses in Paramaribo 
The famous and splendid wooden Cathedral of Paramaribo 
Close to the fortress Zeelandia in Paramaribo, the commander and officer’s houses have been renovated. 
Iguanas and lizards are a common site. 
From the Zeelandia fortress the view over the river and to the bridge, we had passed under a few days before. 
A free guided tour around the fortress was suggested on Sunday morning at 10h. So, we were there. But unfortunately, we don’t speak Dutch…
Mosquitos and caimans
Our visit to the interesting outdoor museum of New Amsterdam, ruins of a fortress / jail and a lot of information about how Surinam was populated, was unfortunately interrupted by millions of mosquitos attacking us! They don’t seem to care about mosquito repellent… or the local mosquitos have a different taste to Brazilian ones (where we bought the last repellent).
One evening we take the dinghy upriver, long sleaved and awfully smelling of mosquito repellent, to finally see caimans. It’s a beautiful evening, for once without rain, and we cruise into quiet side rivers and into a shallow lake. Perfect for caimans we think. But we don’t find any and head back in the pitch dark.
Our only sight of a caiman is a very short, but intensive one: driving along the probably biggest road in Surinam, with water ditches on both sides as everywhere we drive, a caiman walks onto the road in a caimanly relaxed way. We actually have to brake hard and we watch him speeding up across the road into the high grass on the other side of the road. Agreed, he wasn’t enormous (about 1,4 m) but we saw more than just the eyes looking out of muddy water.
Sheep, the sloth
We extend our stay in Surinam for a couple of days because we finally get an appointment at the sloth rehabilitation centre. As they normally only host their animals for a couple of days to make sure they’re ok and then let them out into the forest again, it is not guaranteed to get in close contact with any animals.
Unfortunately, we are not allowed to see the baby anteater or sloth. But we do meet Sheep, the sloth, who was having her free time in the forest 🥰. All explanations are interesting but clearly, we would have liked a closer look at the animal.
The open air museum the other side of the river in New Amsterdam, showing all aspects of cultural and ethnical heritance. 
Amerindian statues at the open air museum 
Cultural variety also in food. We buy smoked fish from a roadside stand. 
The fish seller explained how to make this stew of smoked fish, branch celery and tomatoes. I served it with rice, and it was very appreciated. 
Exploring the surrounding by car, we ended up in an fishing village. 
The multiple side rivers look so still 
When buying vegetable at a stand, this fellow happily chatted to us, or maybe he was angry with us… who knows. 
In a little bird zoo (Bird paradise) we found on the way, we found these owls very expressive. 
The sloth sanctuary of Surinam is built at the edge of the forest in containers. 
Sheep, the 2-finger sloth, goes out of her shelter a few hours a day and then comes back to eat. They hope to be able to let her out completely in a couple of months. 
Looking for caimans in quiet side rivers on our dinghy.
People of Surinam
Pick any colour and shape and any way to talk… There’s no major ethnic group; Muslim, Hindu, Christian,… What’s the deal? They’re proud of their cultural differences, everybody mixes, joins in to the other’s religious celebrations and passes on their languages (at least orally), traditions and food from generation to generation.
Most Surinamese are descendants of slaves and labourers brought from Africa (slaves for sugar plantations, during the colonisation by the Brits), and from Asia (mainly Indian and Javanese, as servants, by the Dutch). The few Amerindians along the coast drew back into the rain forest a long time ago, which covers over 90% of the territory. When independence came in 1975, a lot of Dutch left the country and left behind colonial buildings and their organisation. Later the busy Chinese joined in.
The activities in the country seem to be split up according to their origins: We eat a lot of Javanese and Indian food, buy my new phone from an Indian, buy food reserves and gas bottles in a Chinese Shop and buy our fruit and vegetables on the stands held by Creoles. And when we get back to the River Breeze restaurant, we can’t escape the delicious Dutch “bitterballs”. All very colourful!
Dutch charms with an accent
Dutch is the official language, and most people speak their own language or an English based creole as well as Dutch. A typical situation: our taxi driver Harry, 82 years old, being Indian, speaks fluently Hindi, but cannot write it and has never been to India. He also speaks Dutch and English with a strong Indian accent. Very charming!
In Surinam, the religious sections have meetings regularly. The mosque and the synagogue are next to each other, the Hindu temple and the catholic church are just up the road. 
Delicious spicy “roti” are served at every street corner. Btw, you NEVER get a fork to eat with… lucky if you get a knife! 
In one of the museums, a Mahjong set as well as African, European and other Asian games are shown. 
The Surinam people are very proud of their cultural variety. A poem to unite them all. 
Haarlem, an Amerindian village. The owner of the house decided to protect the population from the very pointy ends of the cactus with beer cans. At first, we thought it was a piece of art! 
The gathering place of Santigron, another ameridian village. Note that one foot of the benches is made from the piles sustaining the roof. No small savings there… 
Boutique Hotel Peperpot, an old coffee plantation upgraded to a nice hotel. 
A hotel room and veranda at the Boutique Hotel Peperpot. 
A pink pomelo. Once you managed to take the very thick peel off, the taste of the fruit was delicious!… 
More or less dead crabs, waiting to be put in a soup. 
Lots of market stands along the road. The peppers were ripping your head off!
Paper hassle!
The evening before leaving, although having checked out according to procedures, we realize there’s a problem with our papiers. We notice, that while checking in 10 days ago, the officer accidently took our copy of the document we need when landing in another country. No choice, we have to wait till the immigration office is open again on Monday.
So, we enjoy our last meal at Rita’s, javanese Bami and Nasi (-goreng), some more bitterballs at the club and, having settled the papers, set down the river another 3 days later than expected under heavy rain!
Turtle beach
We anchor behind the sand dune inside the river again. This time to go on shore. We find what we want: many many traces of turtles coming up the beach to nest. But not only, we find some babies struggling their way out and, coming back at night with red pocket lamps, we see several turtles nesting. Again, amazing!
Next stop: clear waters in the Caribbean at 510 nautical miles (about 4 days sailing). Check our actual position here
This is the road to Rita’s restaurant. Only the first time we did it on foot, result of a wrong information. Too hot and much too far to walk! A typical road in Surinam: no pavements, water ditches on both sides. 
But we came back several times. Her Bami and Nasi, as well as her chicken soup, were delicious. 
Before leaving Surinam, we needed to repair the sail again. It will need more serious work done on it professionally very soon. 
Standard weather at this season in Surniam 
The evening before we left, we even managed to get water from the pontoon. 
Walking along the sand strip between the open sea and the Surinam river, we found many turtle traces. 
And even rescued a few babies, that didn’t manage to get out of the deep holes. 
At night we went back to the beach to watch more turtles coming to lay their eggs. 
Some turtles don’t make their nest high enough, so the nests (and eggs) get washed away by big waves…
Interesting stuff, apart from knowing where it is, that it was Dutch, and it’s capital, I knew nothing about Surinam, so great to read about it. Pity other countries can’t live in peace together like that.
Hope you get the Caribbean experience up before you leave!
xxxx