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 ...