Preview of Els_and_peter's blog at TravelPod. Read the full blog here: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/els_and_peter/1/1256597971/tpod.html This blog preview was made by TravelPod using the TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow creator. Entry from: Paramaribo, Suriname Entry Title: "Journeys into the interior of Suriname (2)" Entry: "Coesewijne, or Swimming with Caiman Peter writes: Gunsi was delightful, but hopeless for seeing wildlife, so we decided to take a tour to the uninhabited interior of the country. These tours are quite expensive, but since uninhabited areas are not well served by public transport they are the only practical way to go. One of the tours advertised in our guesthouse as 'adventurous' took our fancy, and after some hurried phoning around by Alex at the guesthouse, we found ourselves roaring out of town towards the Coesewijne National Park in an old but still impressive Nissan Patrol 4x4. The car, stuffed with paddles, tents, fishing rods, cans of petrol and so forth, belonged to Henk, a large, confident, black guy, who spoke English (when he remembered he should because of my lack of Dutch) with a strong Caribbean accent. He drove as fast as possible, given the condition of the 'roads', playing loud music that he often sang along with, more or less. When not 'singing' he kept up a pretty continuous monologue in sranan tongo (clearly a man entirely comfortable with the sound of his own voice), and occasionally gave us interesting nuggets of information about the geology of the landscape, the history of the region and so forth. The long-suffering recipient of Henk's no doubt cogent opinions was Jay, our tour leader, a much younger guy of evidently hindustani descent. Jay told us that he usually works at one of the main tourist centres, and that this was his day off; we found out only later that he was a last-minute substitute guide, whose lack of experience caused him some problems during the trip. Most of his siblings are in Holland, with the exception of his 13-year-old younger brother, whom he's paying to keep in school (which is only compulsory until 12). Without Jay's support, the brother would have to find work himself, at the expense of his education. Our first stop (other than to pick up supplies) was at an Amerindian village called Bigi Poika, to pick up our local guide. The layout and architecture were quite different to the Maroon villages we had seen earlier. Houses were spaced out along the road, each one with a covered exterior space, used for both work and recreation, where we often saw people relaxing in hammocks. Everything was well built and for the most part in good repair, in contrast to Gunsi, where the huts were mostly very small and frequently quite dilapidated (though termites had a lot to do with this). We pulled up at one compound, but found out that our guide wasn't quite ready because of caring for his sick mother, so we went on to the end of the village, where Henk took us for a walk along a decaying causeway to a lovely creek occupied by small boys playing in the water. After half an hour we went back and collected our guide, a short, stocky older man called 'Baba' (reflecting his grandfather status), who squeezed onto the back seat with us, making the rest of the car ride quite uncomfortable. However we didn't go far immediately, since we were taken to see the traditional process of making cassava bread under one of the covered spaces. Two women were efficiently peeling and scraping cassavas, ready to be grated (which they now do with a petrol-powered machine), squeezed in long bag woven from reeds and pounded into flour in a large pestle. Baba demonstrated the pounding action to the great amusement of the two women, either because his technique was poor or perhaps just because this is traditionally female activity (Baba told us that the men concentrate on growing the cassavas). Another woman was baking oval flatbreads over a fire, which were then cut in half and packaged, with three half-breads in each plastic bag. We recognised these, having bought one at the market in Paramaribo without knowing what it was! The programmed ' ..." Read and see more at: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/els_and_peter/1/1256597971/tpod.html Photos from this trip: 1. "Bridge to creek in Bigi Poika" 2. "Women peeling cassavas" 3. "Finished cassava bread" 4. "Leaky boat!" 5. "Dusk view down river" 6. "Jay fishing" 7. "Termites and tarantulas" 8. "Baba pounding cassava" 9. "View from the boat" 10. "View of the river" 11. "Our camp" 12. "Vulture circling" 13. "Kingfisher on a tree" 14. "Kingfisher" 15. "Black-collared fish hawk" 16. "Spider we saw while out walking" 17. "Baba making a fish trap" 18. "Fish cooking" See this TripWow and more at http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-00bb-b5ae-70d0?ytv4=1

• published: 10 Dec 2010
• views: 865