Getting to Guyana didn't go as smoothly as it was supposed to. Our guesthouse had booked for us a van that was supposed to take us the whole way from Paramaribo to Georgetown, and they had told us the price included the fare for the ferry crossing. We were collected at 4.30am and shared a small people mover (van?!?) with 3 Brazilian women. There was very little luggage space as the very back seats of the van took up the boot space and were designed for 3 year o...

Back in Paramaribo, we got up nice and early on the Sunday morning to go and see the songbird competition at Independence Square on Onafhankelijkheidsplein (don't ask us how to pronounce that!). This is a serious hobby in Suriname, and an expensive one. Grown men spend in the vicinity of $2,500 US on a bird (perhaps more), which they generally carry around in a little cage with them wherever they go, and they "train" the birds to sing. On a Sunday morning, all ...

Our day trip to Brownsberg started at 8am with our guide Steven, though in the jungle it's "Steve-o", a young Surinamese guy that constantly said "yeah man" in a Caribbean accent despite having spent most of his life in Holland. We had one fellow passenger, Helene from Holland who had been working in Suriname. Brownsberg, or Brown Mountain is a good 3 hours or so from Paramaribo. We stopped on the way for snacks, some yummy Surinamese treats like egg rolls and f...

We had booked into a hotel in Paramaribo called Zin Guesthouse. On arrival it looked great, a bar/café area and a big pool. Our room on the other hand wasn't as great, with a horribly uncomfortable bed, and as we soon discovered it was very noisy at night while the party kicked on downstairs. Our new friend Marcus also decided to follow us there. Our first task was to get money out, so we found an ATM and had a beer, then went in search for a restaurant called ...

St Laurent is a penal colony on the banks of the Fleuve Marconi (Marconi River), which separates French Guiana and Suriname. We asked our bus to drop us at the Tourist Info so we could leave our bags while we checked out the town. We were joined by Marcus, a chatty German that was on our bus also heading to Suriname. We walked a short distance to the Ancien Camp de la Transportation, a prison camp for "The Transported", convicts who were deported to French Guia...