Exploring Suriname

Gusterie is about 80 km from Paramaribo. You can reach the place with a 4WD jeep. It’s situated in the tropical rain forest in a savanna area near the Coesewijne savanna and the Native Indian village Bigi Poika. Gusterie has a little camp at a creek with open huts with roofs made from leaves, where you can stay overnight in hammocks. The larger hut has a kitchen and a place where you can sit and chill. Bigi Poika is an Indian village about 15 km from Gusterie.

Last weekend I took off for a two days trip to Gusterie with a Dutch friend, who stays in Suriname at the moment, and her 2 colleagues. The cooling box was filled, our bags were packed and on our way we made a stop at Lelydorp to do some shopping for dinner. For lunch we brought some roti’s. That’s a kind of thin pancake stuffed with kousenband (Yardlong Beans), potatoes and chicken with a curry (masalla) taste. At Gusterie we wanted to make some rice with chicken, cucumber and beans for the first day and rice with coleslaw and shrimps for the second day. Suriname is famous for its tasty shrimps. And with a homemade garlic sauce with lots of garlic it’s totally complete and you’ll keep everybody, including the mosquito’s at a safe distance!

The road up to Zanderij, where the Johan Adolf Pengel airport is, is in a proper state, but from there on the concrete road changes into a sand road full of holes. Our road was getting more and more adventurous because of the mud pools that appeared. The rain season showed its presence.

On the way we made a stop at a monument for an airplane disaster. On June 7th, 1989 an airplane of SLM (Surinam Airways) crashed and 176 people lost their lives. Only 13 people survived the crash. Among the dead people were 14 football players and their coach of the Kleurrijk (Colorful) Team of Suriname. A bit further in the sand behind the monument you can still see some plane parts which is kind of bizarre.

We continued our drive and came at the Saron bridge across the Saramacca river, where we had to pay SRD 5 ($1.75/ euro1.40) toll to the bridge guard. We now understood why the bridge seemed a bit dilapidated. You can’t do that much for SRD 5 per car! Finally we arrived safely at the other side of the river over the wooden boards.

The next bridge we reached was an emergency-bridge near the Moeroe creek, made by residents and passers-by because the water had taken possession of the road. Parts of the road had been washed away creating a big and deep hole: our next exciting challenge to overcome! We started to feel like real Camel Trophy riders, the great adventure had just begun!

After driving a while the red bauxite road with mud made place for the lose white sand from the savanna, which meant we were close to Gusterie.

Here we enjoyed ourselves a lot! A bit of swimming, fishing, peddling in a korjaal (dugout canoe), chopping wood for the campfire, making dinner, while drinking a cool Parbo Bier (a local beer) or a Borgoe-Cola (a Surinamese rum with a sweet, soft taste).

I won’t show all pictures so I won’t give wrong impressions! Like the boat that sank, with us still in it! Apparently the boat was built for 2 persons instead of 4! We thought we could make it! In the end we could save all, the boat, the peddles, the Parbo beer and last but not least ourselves!

Gusterie is an area with a lot of bird species (like parrots and toucans), the beautiful blue morpho butterfly and you can even spot the jaguar here. Besides this there are armadillos, tapirs and pingo’s (wild swines living in the jungle), caimans and lots of fish. You can see a lot of snakes as well, like the very poisonous Labaria (Bothrops atrox, common lancehead).

The next day we visited Bigi Poika, an Indian village about 15 km. from Gusterie. That we were handling very up to date we saw the next day in an article from the newspaper “De Ware Tijd” (Monday June 11th). The very bad and almost impassable road that we had crossed was the subject from the article. In thick and big characters at the front page it said: “Isolation threats for Bigi Poika and surroundings”. In the article inhabitants ask for help from the government because the public bus, the only conveyance for most of the people to go to and come from Paramaribo, can’t reach Bigi Poika anymore. The Moeroe creek had washed away 3 meters of the road near the creek. Food, diesel supply for the generators (electricity) and water was becoming a problem. Let’s hope that the government has some attention for this problem.

On our way back to Gusterie we saw a sign indicating sea cows. If you follow that road there is a possibility to spot sea cows, but we didn’t do that since it was not the season.

We had another good time at Gusterie and after a good and tasty meal, being extra tasty in the forest, we started our way back to Paramaribo.

Soon it became clear that the road was even worse than on the way up. When we saw a big truck with big tree trunks stuck in the mud, we followed its example a little while later and became deeply stuck in the mud, up to the front bumper of the car.

Luckily there’s more traffic at this road, Surinamese people being well prepared for this kind of bad roads, with good jeeps at their disposal. Like the big pick-up jeep behind us bringing salvation, with lots of power, high on its big profile tires and with a winch at the front. There’s a kind of solidarity feeling in the forest and Surinamese people in general are very friendly and willing to help other people in distress. With help from the winch we got pulled out of the mud and could continue our trip… but not for long, because the next problem was coming up: the emergency bridge was no longer a bridge! (it had gone scuba diving)

The water was rushing over it with full power! And there was a deep hole in the road caused by the streaming water. What was supposed to be a road was now a creek! Across the water there were more people ready to offer help if necessary. We were still being followed by our hero’s who helped us out and again the experienced driver from that car managed to get, under loud applause and encouragement from us, our car across the water like a miracle!! Hip hip hurray!

This was the situation, mentioned in the article in the newspaper. We were living it ourselves!!!

We were glad to feel the concrete road beneath us again, on our way back to Paramaribo. After washing the car thoroughly, another adventure had finished. Next time we better hire a bigger and stronger jeep for this kind of adventure!

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