Sunrise on the Suriname River, near the Anaula Nature Resort. Foto: Thomas Munita
by Simon
Romero
The road to Atjoni got more
interesting as the wind grew stronger, making the surrounding ceiba trees of
the Surinamese jungle murmur with whispers of an impending storm. We were hours
into the country’s interior when we came across a solitary hunter. He had a
shotgun slung from his shoulder and a machete sheathed at his waist. We stopped
to talk. After brief introductions, things became complicated.
Suriname’s jungles. Sensing our
inability to get by in Saramaka, he switched to Dutch, pointing at a nearby
tree where he had just spotted some movement, laughed again and said, “boom
kip,” which literally means “tree chicken.” Our blank stares prompted him to
switch languages yet again, this time to Sranan Tongo, the extraordinarily
playful Creole language that borrows from English, Dutch and Portuguese and is
Suriname’s lingua franca. “Legwana,” he said, and finally we understood that he
meant iguana. He then explained that he was after something a bit more
satisfying, some “pingo” (wild boar), perhaps, or “hei,” a coveted forest
rodent called paca in English. With a broad smile, he waved us on our way down
that jungle road to Atjoni, a crossing at a bend of the Suriname River.
Just 500,000 people live in
Suriname, a country on South America’s northeastern shoulder about the size of
Florida, but the variety of cultures they represent rivals those of much larger
countries. The official language is Dutch, in a nod to Suriname’s past as a
colony of the Netherlands,
but on the streets of Paramaribo, the capital, one hears, in addition to Sranan
Tongo, languages like Hindi and Javanese. Chinese characters decorate signs on
casinos and corner stores. Motorized rickshaws called tuk-tuks speed past
mosques and Hindu temples, giving Suriname a vaguely Asian feel. (With a name
that rhymes with Vietnam, Hollywood seems to prefer
it this way: the movie “The Silence of the Lambs” seems to suggest that
Suriname is in Asia.)
Suriname’s obscurity and charm, in an age in which frontiers seem to melt away
at the click of a mouse, proves that there are still corners of the world that
can provide surprise and adventure, even a bit of awe.
Indeed, when I told friends where my
wife, Carolina, and I were headed for a brief vacation, I received the oddest
reactions. One related a tale from a London newsroom
in which an esteemed news organization’s South America correspondent called his
editor upon arriving in Paramaribo, only to hear a voice bark from the other
end of the line, “What the hell are you doing in Africa?”
Another recommended a book in preparation for my trip, “Bush Master: Into the
Jungles of Dutch Guiana,” by the adventurer Nicol Smith (as if the title was
not enough, the book’s preposterous jacket description reads, “An authentic
hair-raising account of voodooism, wild adventure, three-fingered men and
tropical terrors.”) Perhaps the best reaction came from Boris Muñoz, a friend
from Caracas with
a highly cultivated sense of irony who is one of Venezuela’s
most respected journalists. “Does Suriname actually exist?” he asked me. “I
know of only one other person who has said he has been there.”
I can now safely report back that
Suriname, splendid in its isolation, does indeed exist. For now, at least, the
only foreign travelers who visit this remote corner of South America in big
numbers are the Dutch. A direct flight from Amsterdam to the Paramaribo-Zanderij airport
shuttles thousands of them into the country every year. But Suriname’s appeal
should be broadening now that it has distanced itself from a wrenching civil
war in the late 1980s and can capitalize on the allure of its huge tracts of rain forest.
The opening of new guest houses and hotels suggests that perhaps it is ready.
Of course, neither Suriname nor its
capital is a destination for celebrity sightings or thread-count hounds. Its
hotels are more Graham Greene than Ian Schrager. The country’s appeal lies in
its friendly, affordable and accessible exoticism, along with the novel sense
one gets there of being in a place just recently shed of its colonial past. It
also happens to have phenomenal food.
The obvious place to begin any visit
to Suriname is in Paramaribo, a sleepy city between jungle and sea. With its
white clapboard mansions and colonial brick buildings, it seems to belong to
another continent, if not another era; it ranks as one of South America’s
safest and tidiest capitals.
With only about 250,000 people, the
city is small and accessible, and pleasantly good for walking and bicycling. We
started our exploration at the markets along the elegant Waterkant, or
Waterfront, where dozens of stalls offer a window into Suriname’s astonishing
diversity. Maroons and Arawaks, one of the country’s indigenous tribes, sell
nearly everything under the sun from the country’s interior at the Freedom
Market — from bush meat to live monkeys and bottles of casiri, a brew made from
cassava.
At the adjacent Central Market,
there are a variety of stalls selling knickknacks, fresh produce and ready-made
delights like curry egg and sardines with onions and peppers. At another stall,
specializing in Javanese cuisine, we tried rice cubes stewed in coconut, brown
sugar and spicy pepper and served in a banana leaf. Items picked up during a
casual stroll could feed you for the day on pennies. The meal we assembled cost
all of 3 Suriname dollars apiece, less than one American dollar.
Other vendors sold pirated Bollywood
movies, and Rastafarians offered reggae CDs and tapestries of the Ethiopian
emperor Haile Selassie.
While many Surinamese happily speak
English, I took the opportunity to try to learn a few words in Sranan Tongo
while wading through the markets; the language’s flexibility and playfulness
never failed to surprise me. “Faya,” I learned, sounds like fire but can mean
electricity or lightning, and “dagadaga” sounds like “dagger dagger” but means
“machine gun.” (An appreciation of Sranan Tongo is provided in the writer John
Gimlette’s excellent new travel book, “Wild Coast,” about Suriname, Guyana and
French Guiana.) “Lobiwan,” literally “loved one,” is a commonly used term of
address. Ordering a ginger beer from a market stall involved pronouncing the
word, “dyindyabiri,” and to say many thanks, simply utter “Grantangi!”
Understanding how this cultural
mash-up came to be in a remote part of the world with tongue-twisting street
names like Noorderkerkstraat and Jaggernath Lachmonstraat curiously has to do
with an island called Manhattan. I learned this on a short road trip out of Paramaribo with a
friend, Ranu Abhelakh, a Surinamese writer and journalist, to some ruins at the
confluence of the Suriname and Commewijne Rivers near the Atlantic coast —
specifically at Fort Nieuw Amsterdam, built by the Dutch in the 18th century
now housing a museum.
Exhibits at the complex, still
surrounded by a dike to prevent flooding, explain how the Dutch traded New York
for Suriname to the English in the 17th century.
For decades, it seemed as if the
Dutch had gotten the better end of the deal. Soon, though, they were under
attack from escaped slaves who had organized into a formidable opposition,
mounting raids on plantations. The conflict resulted in a siege mentality that
survives to this day in the language; Maroons still call Paramaribo “Foto,” or
Fort. Built as a bastion to ward off Maroon attacks, Fort Nieuw Amsterdam now
stands as testament to the resilience of the rebellious slaves and their
descendants, with whom the Dutch were ultimately forced to sign peace treaties.
After slavery was abolished in the 19th century, the Dutch brought in laborers
from India, China and Indonesia,
producing the unusual mix of cultures that now defines Suriname.
Back in Paramaribo, we decided to
spend an evening exploring Blauwgrond, an ethnically mixed district famed for
its great restaurants, and for the most part calmer than other areas favored by
Dutch travelers. Starting out on foot, we slipped into a Hindu temple called
Shri Radha Krishna Mandir. It was our good fortune to arrive at the start of
Holi, a Hindu spring religious festival. Outside, a bonfire of bamboo shoots
was set aflame in the humid night air, sounding like hundreds of firecrackers
going off at once. Attendees at the ceremony warmly asked us where we were
from. Together, we watched the flames dance and crackle. Then it was time to
eat.
Blauwgrond is renowned for its
Javanese restaurants called warungs. We wandered through the area’s narrow streets
before finding one called Warung Felicia. A waitress handed us a delicious
drink made of lemon grass, milk and coconut. The restaurant was Muslim-owned
and did not serve alcohol, but when we asked about getting a tall bottle of
locally brewed Parbo beer, the owner waved us across the street toward a
Chinese food shop. After we returned, Parbo in hand, the owners gave us
glasses. Then the real treat: saoto, a soup of fried potato, bean sprouts, egg,
chicken and spices that astounded me with its potency.
A few days later, it was time to
explore the interior. While Suriname has an Atlantic coastline, the country
lacks the kind of beaches that lure travelers to the Caribbean. Instead, visitors often head inland for
swimming, fishing, hiking and bird-watching, traveling along
relatively well-maintained roads equipped with drempels (speed bumps). My aim
was to go piranha fishing at a lodge called Anaula while getting a taste for
the interior before flying back over the rain forest in a small Cessna. Tours
are offered throughout hinterlands, as are private guides. An English-speaking
driver with a Toyota with four-wheel drive, provided by a jungle outfitter
recommended by a friend in Paramaribo, picked us up in the capital.
We soon found ourselves on that road
cutting through Suriname’s vast interior. A few hours into the drive, I
realized we were in gold rush country. Shops along the road were selling
everything from spare parts for backhoes to salted beef and cases of Red Bull;
inside, we could hear conversations among other customers in Portuguese, the
language of Brazilian garimpeiros, or miners. They were on the hunt for
Suriname’s gold in small mines carved out of the surrounding forest.
Once we arrived in Atjoni, a busy
river crossing and departure point for canoe trips along the river was our
first glimpse into Suriname’s wild frontier. A cellphone tower underscored this
as a place of important commerce, as did a store in which a Chinese merchant
sold unlocked BlackBerrys and bottles of Borgoe 82 rum.
A guide met us there in a motorized
canoe for the short trip on the river to Anaula, a lodge replete with cabanas,
bats flying in and out of the canteen and a swimming pool, where we dropped off
our backpacks and immediately cast our lines for piranha. Our boat driver,
Angelo Amimba, 21, proved the luckiest fisherman, catching several over a few
minutes as we flailed around with our poles catching nothing.
Dinner that evening was a mellow
affair in an open-air dining room frequented by Dutch travelers. A barman
served Parbo and Cuba Libres.
Civilization, or what passed for it, seemed to have gained a toehold in the
forest. The magnificent rain that fell later that night over Anaula’s spartan
cabins drowned out the symphony of sounds coming from insects and birds.
The next day we took a canoe to
Nieuw Aurora, a Maroon village across the river. On one side of the village, a
clinic and a church illustrated its links with other parts of Suriname and the
outside world. Even cellphones worked. But exploring the dirt paths where Nieuw
Aurora merged with another community, Tjaikondre, it was clear that this was a
community that had won its independence from the Dutch long ago (indeed,
Maroons have long called their lands kondres, a word reminiscent of countries)
and felt at ease interacting with outsiders as equals. As the hot sun beat down
on Nieuw Aurora, it dawned on me that its residents have much to teach those of
us from so-called developed countries about rebellion, resilience, pacing life
according to one’s surroundings and self-sufficiency.
Nieuw Aurora’s relaxed pace of life
made Paramaribo seem like a bustling metropolis. Old men played checkers in the
shade. Some villagers collected firewood or tended nearby farming plots. Others
waited for the sun’s heat to abate before venturing to hunt in the forest. We
found one such dreadlocked group sitting on the porch of a wooden store,
sipping Parbo and strumming reggae tunes on a guitar. I asked one young man
what he did for a living. “I’m a gunman and farmer,” he responded, explaining
that by the former he meant to say that he was a skilled hunter. Then he and
his friends invited us to stay in their village, in an empty hut reserved for
travelers, and go on a hunt in the forest with them for pingos. “It will be the
adventure of your life,” he said, as I tried to politely decline since a Cessna
was to pick us up at the dirt airstrip that afternoon.
Though I had been in the country
only a few days, I felt as if I had traversed several continents and only now —
drinking beer, shaking hands and striking up conversation with these men — was
I getting a taste of Suriname’s frontier.
But it was time to leave. As storm
clouds threatened a downpour that never arrived, I realized there was just one
thing I’d like to have changed on our trip. Next time, I promised myself, I
would stay on this side of the river.
, with direct air connections to a
few places, including Amsterdam, Aruba and Belém, Brazil, is splendidly isolated. Expect a stopover in
one exotic locale or another. A recent online search found round-trip flights
between Kennedy International Airport and Paramaribo starting at $790 on Caribbean Airlines, with a layover in
Port of Spain, Trinidad.
To the Jungle and Beyond
WHERE TO EAT
Central Market on Paramaribo’s Waterkant
(Waterfront) has dozens of stalls from which delicious meals can be assembled
for about $1, at 3.29 Suriname dollars to the U.S. dollar.
Warung Felicia (J. Samson Greenstraat, Paramaribo;
597-453-257) has excellent Javanese food. Figure about 30 dollars a person
for dinner.
Joke’s Crab House (108 Verlengde Gemenelandsweg,
Paramaribo; 597-532-024) is a great place to hear live jazz. About 40 dollars
for a meal of chicken roti and a Parbo beer.
Spice Quest (107 Nassylaan, Paramaribo;
597-520-747) serves excellent Surinamese fusion cuisine and Japanese food under
the direction of the chef and owner Patrick Woei. A meal for two costs
about 198 dollars.
Where to go
Access Suriname (37 Prinsessenstraat,
Paramaribo; 597-424-533; surinametravel.com) arranges rain forest excursions largely for Dutch
travelers into Suriname’s interior. The five-hour drive from Paramaribo to the
river crossing at Atjoni, on paved and dirt roads cutting through the jungle in
a chauffeured four-wheel drive, is an adventure in itself (343 Suriname
dollars). From there, a guide takes visitors by canoe to the resort of Anaula on the Suriname
River (doubles are about 360 dollars), replete with piranha fishing, a swimming pool and trails leading into the
forest.
Where to stay
The Royal Torarica (10
KleineWaterstraat, Paramaribo; 597-473-500; royaltorarica.com) may be Suriname’s most comfortable hotel, and its location, within
walking distance of the beer garden at ’t Vat and the colonial buildings of
Independence Square, is excellent. Amenities include a pool and a casino.
Doubles start at about 575 Suriname dollars.
Hotel Krasnapolsky (39 Domineestraat, Paramaribo;
597-475-050; krasnapolsky.sr) is located in the middle of the
capital’s bustle with 84 guest rooms. It would be stretch to call the Kras, as
it’s known to locals, luxurious, but with its circa-’70s décor, the hotel would
be a fine candidate for the setting of a James Bond film. Doubles start at
about 390 dollars.
Simon Romero is a correspondent for The
Times based in Rio de Janeiro.
Dit
artikel werd eerder gepubliceerd in de New York Times op 18 september 2011
