Just pay the Ferry-man.

We are once again at the mercy of the ferry schedule, which does not run on Wednesday afternoons and by the time we get to the Port it is mid-afternoon, and Wednesday. The option was to hire one of the smaller boat Captains to take us across the 2 mile wide river. One good thing is that the rain stopped, but now it is smokin’ hot again, there is no happy medium. After some negotiations and looking at the canoes available it is decided to wait until tomorrow and take the ferry. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and the Port Officer warns us that it will be very busy in the morning as it is popular for people to spend Christmas and New Years in Suriname.

Our ever helpful and optimistic boat Captains.

 We check into the hotel and then go for a walk around town. We find a market that is just closing down and we scoop a small watermelon for a treat after supper. By the time we get back to the hotel the rain starts again and without any taxis we end up eating the watermelon and calling it a night. Geez, our diets are sure being put to the test.

The line at the ferry is as expected very long, then we see the size of the ferry and are glad that we can sneak to the front of the line. Bikes generally don’t wait in line at ferries because we fit between the cars on the boat. 

A quick little float and we are across the river and officially in Suriname. There was a lot of information online about the process for checking out of Fr. Guiana, none of which applied to us because we never got asked for bike insurance or any other bike related paperwork. Just our passports, stamp stamp and Au Revoir. On the Suriname side it was very simple as well, stamp the passport, show the importation officer our Suriname Insurance and Alberta Registration, and we are finished. Welcome to Suriname.

Our first clockwise traffic circle.

150km later we arrive in the capital city of Paramaribo which reflects the Dutch heritage from when it was colonized about 300yrs ago.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suriname

Because it is now Christmas Eve, we have chosen to stay for a couple of days to catch up on a few housekeeping items. This also meant that we chose to rent an apartment hotel room with a kitchenette instead of the normal hotel room. Predictably the first order of business was to get settled in, then go to the market and buy some groceries as we were not sure if restaurants would be open Christmas day or not. It seems most of the stores in town have Oriental letters in addition to Roman characters, so it is much like going into China town. They have a lot of the brand names that we are used to seeing in Canada as well, this is a nice change but the prices are also very close to Canada. They do still utilize fresh veggie markets for their produce and what is in the “super markets” is not very fresh looking compared to the street markets. We load up on some basics to carry us over the next couple of days, nothing fancy just some fruit and veggies and a couple cans of tuna. Weird thing was that we did not see any onions anywhere, even though it is a mix of East Indian and Chinese people for the most part. Maybe it is too wet here for them to grow.

In any event , the next couple of days are spent resting, typing, researching, and a bit of snooping around town. We even managed to get our laundry done. Nothing like fresh laundry to put a smile on your face after smelling like a hockey bag for about a week or so.

Our host is an interesting individual; Winston owns 4 or 5 hotels and/or bars in town. His pride and joy seems to be “Emergency 911” which is more of an after-hours club that is open pretty much 24hrs per day. He explains that a lot of the “industry” people come there after their bars close and then party until noonish, then go home and sleep. He must be doing well because he has two Harleys and a Porsche 911 Turbo parked at our Hotel and apparently a collection stashed somewhere else. He laughs as he says he has too many toys.

For the first time on this trip we are also encounter the secondary currency market. In Suriname there is a black market for USD$ just like in Argentina. The posted bank rate is $1USD=$4SRD, the black market rate is around $4.5-$4.8SRD, depending on the day and who you talk to. We had not heard of this in our research so it is a bit of a surprise and of course no matter how you slice it, we get a bad exchange in either direction. It does not help that our dollar is at 0.73USD either. They are not sympathetic to this and because “all business is done is USD” we have no choice but to bite our tongues and pay up. It adds about $10/day to the hotel room, and who knows how much to everything else.