Journal - Suriname
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 Suriname |
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On the other side there
were about 10 vans waiting to pick people up. I got in one filled with young
black girls. They were a grumpy-looking band they all seemed
to know each other. I tried to talk to one of them but she just snapped at me
so I minded my own business. We drove down a rough dirt road for about a half
hour until we got to a paved road, and the van dropped us off and we got in
a nice Honda accord. I sat in the front seat and we zoomed down the well-paved
road about four hours to the capital of Paramaribo. The drive through the Surinamese
countryside was a lot different than Guyana. In Guyana the road is almost constantly
lined with houses but Suriname is a lot less populated. Most of the drive was
along grass fields along irrigation canals and trees. We went through a couple
of villages before the capital city. When I got there I got a hotel room at
an old white Dutch guys house ands then went for a walk around the town. There
was a central grass area that was surrounded by government buildings next to
the river. I saw in the distance they were constructing a bridge. Next to the
grass area there was a kind of park with trees around. I walked past a tall
wooden yellow church. My book said it was the tallest wooden structure in the
world. It looked wilted and the paint was falling off.
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Paramaibo street with Dutch architecture |
I couldn't really communicate
with the people there because they all spoke
Dutch or a Dutch Creole. So when I saw a white guy sitting down eating I sat
down next to him and we started talking. He had been living in a small town
in Guyana for the last couple of months staying at his best friend families
house and teaching in a local school. he was on vacation in Suriname for a couple
of days. The next day I explored the city, which by American standards would
just be a town. I went to the bank to get more money but none of the banks accepted
visa card, and I had no money left, so i figured the only way to get out of
the country was to fly to Brazil of Venezuela, but that was expensive so I looked
around and found a place where Brazilian miners work and I could change the
Brazilian money I had. It was just enough to take the van back to Guyana, but
I still had to eat so I spent the rest of the day looking for a place I could
eat with my visa card. Luckily for me there was a place about five kilometers
out of town a nice hotel where the Dutch people stay, but I had to eat 20 bucks
worth of food which wasn't too hard because the place was expensive. The next
morning at five I went to the place the vans leave for Guyana and got in a car.
I asked the guy about five times if he went to the river and he said yes but
he only took me to the beginning of the dirt road so I had to pay again to get
a van to the river.
