Suriname

We are currently in Trinidad after a four day, 520 nm trip from Suriname. We checked in here, anchored out for a few days, then decided to come into the marina at Peake’s. We’re hauling out on Monday for a week or two. Right now we are enjoying a very reasonably priced marina with free electricity, water, wifi and amazing customer service!

Catching up on pictures…

 We drove to the capital of Suriname, Paramaribo, and took a self-guided walking tour. We started at the tourist office, picked up a really nice map and headed to the closest attraction which was Fort Zeelandia. We walked through one of the adjacent museums but it was all in Dutch. The lady in the museum took the time to explain about 80 percent of it to us. It was a museum about a Dutch plantation manager and writer, Willem Eduard Herman.

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Then onto Fort Zeelandia, also all in Dutch:

http://cityofparamaribo.com/read/Fort_Zeelandia

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Then onto Independence Square. Every Sunday, they have song bird competitions. We missed that but did manage to see the square:

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Presidential Palace:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Palace_of_Suriname

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Ministry of Finance:

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National Assembly:

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Random pictures around town:

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National Bank of Suriname:

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St Peter and Paul Cathedral, the largest wooden structure in the western hemisphere. We couldn’t get in because we were wearing shorts. Five degrees north of the equator we were wearing shorts…for-shame. I just stuck the phone through the door and snapped some terrible pictures. It was really beautiful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Peter_and_Paul_Cathedral

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Dutch Reformed Church. The church was under renovation but we snuck in an open door and took some pictures…and when we go home in January we’re buying a real camera:

http://cityofparamaribo.com/read/Dutch_reformed_church

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The church was built over a cemetery, so there are graves in the floor of the church:

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Post Office:

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Random pictures of Paramaribo:

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I love our cell phone company, Digicel:

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We also love De Stadsslager, a butcher shop with the most amazing cuts of meat:

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Another random pic of Paramaribo:

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After our day in the city, we returned to Domburg. Dea Latis on a mooring:

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The next day we headed further inland to Waterland Marina:

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We almost had the place to ourselves:

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That is a resort on the river and that fence in the water keeps the piranha out of the swimming area:

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That brown splotch in the middle of the picture is a howler monkey:

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I tried to bait him down with some tiny bananas but he just yawned, looked away, and muttered something about perpetuating stereotypes…

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…and that evening Tanya made vegetarian stuffed eggplant which was insanely delicious!

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Categories: Cruising, Destinations | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Our Last Night

Sadly, it’s our last night in Suriname. We have had a wonderful time here. We still have a couple of updates for Suriname, but we’ll have to get to that later. We are leaving on the AM tide and heading for Trinidad. We will be hauling out at Peak’s to do the bottom then hopping up, probably to St Maarten.

FYI…

We took the bus into Paramaribo to check out with Military Police/Immigration and the mean lady was gone! We checked out with the nicest immigration official!

Catch up when we can.

Categories: General | 1 Comment

Suriname

Trying a dangerous new font…

We have been having a wonderful time in Suriname! We were anchored as far up the river as we could go and were visited by the Police this morning! They were quite agitated, thinking we were illegal and hiding out way up the river. Once we produced our passports and boat papers they did a 180 and were quite nice! I heard one of the officers tell the pilot not to scratch our boat “it’s very expensive.” They were very nice once they figured out we were legal. Anyway… Catching up on pictures…

When we arrived in Suriname we took a mooring at Domburg Harbour Resort. We were greeted by the manager Gaby (Hhaby). He sat us down, gave us a liter of beer and briefed us on the check-in process. Very customer service oriented here!

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Dea Latis down there somewhere:

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Domburg Harbour Resort is a really nice place to stay!

Www.marinasuriname.com

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We really wanted and tried to like Banks beer, the beer in Guyana. We just couldn’t force ourselves to like it. The local lager beer here in Suriname, Parbo, is really good, and comes in liter bottles!

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Haven’t seen flavored coke in a while:

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Police Station right behind the marina:

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Local homes:

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We had to check in with Maritime Authority Suriname in Paramaribo. They were quite cordial and efficient:

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Then to the bank to get raped with transaction fees:

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Then onto Consulaire Zaken to get a tourist card:

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Lunch time. We noticed a place were all the locals were eating. We had the Kerrie Kip (curried chicken) and it was fantastic:

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After lunch we had to check in with immigration at the Suriname Military Police Headquarters. The military personnel were very professional however the civil servant immigration lady was the most unpleasant person we have had the displeasure to deal with since leaving the US. We had received reports of a very angry and unpleasant lady at the immigration office but decided to discount the reports and be optimistic. Oh well, she processed us in and we were on our way. No pictures of that visit…

We picked up a few things at Tulip grocery store and found, Tom’s of Maine…in Suriname. Represent!

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More to follow…

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Entering

The things we see…

Entering a new country is always a concern for me, it’s full of unknowns. We were entering the Suriname River, the entrance is relatively shallow, the river is busy with commercial traffic, and we ran across this cargo ship.

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New Hunter, 600 feet, outbound, in the channel…

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Seemed like it wasn’t moving so we checked the AIS data again. Then we noticed, Navstatus: Aground, in the fairway at green buoy S6, the next channel marker we were heading for. With a 22 foot draft, she was hard aground in 15 feet of water, just outside of the channel! CLE, career limiting event…

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The channel is very well marked so it’s a real tragedy that somebody lost their life in the recovery effort. Later in the week three tug boats were used to pull the ship back into the channel. During the effort, one tug capsized, the crew made it out but the captain lost his life.

Well marked. See the current flowing by at about three knots? This is the time our chart plotter predicted slack tide…

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More slack tide:

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River traffic:

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Up the Suriname River past the port at Paramaribo:

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Under this bridge, to Domburg:

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We are going to find some secluded anchorage for a few days. Update more on Suriname later.

Categories: Cruising, Destinations, General, Happenings | Tags: | 2 Comments

To Suriname

There are some things you see out here that are truly remarkable and never get old. While sailing from Guyana to Suriname we were visited by a pod of dolphins. They stayed with us for only about 10 minutes, playing around and under the boat, disappearing and then chasing us down again. I wish I had grabbed the gopro and got this on video…

Click on the picture for a full screen view

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