Imagine old Cape Cod architecture, lower Manhattan’s oldest brick buildings, swaying palms, sultry tropical days punctuated by heavy rain, brick stoops leading to wooden buildings up to three stories tall – connected by 200 year old (or more) sweeping wooden staircases and you have the slimmest of beginnings of the treasures that Suriname has to offer.

The capital, Paramaribo, is all of the above, along with casinos outfitted with Vegas’ outcast slot machines, a beautiful riverside setting, and it’s completely walkable.

This review is completely biased and based on a recent 10 day trip.

Why Suriname?

Suriname is ideal for tourists looking for natural surroundings, picturesque architecture, eco-tourism, and a place truly away from it all that is quiet, safe, and more or less English-speaking. If you have an interest in the erstwhile Dutch empire, so much the better! If you know Dutch, even better still!

If you love cultural diversity, Suriname is most definitely for you. There is no majority. About 20% of the population is Muslim, 35% Hindu, 20% Indonesian (mostly from Java), 20% African (not “black” but really African), and the rest mixed. Hindu temples, synagogues, mosques, churches, etc. dot the landscape, occasionally even side by side.

Although it likes to think it is a Caribbean country, indeed it is not. There are no (none at all) sandy white beaches, luxury hotels, cruise ships, and all the claptrap that is the typical Caribbean vacation.

If you like a bit of adventure, you might like Suriname. If you want a package tour with no hassles, easy flight connections, and rum on a beach, Suriname is not for you.

The country is small, but much bigger than any of the usual Caribbean islands. The population is about a half million, with most of those living in and around the capital, colonial Paramaribo. The only other settlement of significance is Nikerie, but that is just a small town and even the capital is little more than a big town.

Who comes here?

Most people coming to Suriname as tourists are Dutch and eco-tourists. They are Dutch because Suriname was a Dutch colony and never really wanted to be an independent country until the Dutch agreed to massive payments in development aid. Even once promised, estimates say that most Surinamers headed out the door and settled in the Netherlands for better social welfare and job prospects. That was 1975 and there was a famous cartoon in the local newspaper showing the airport which had a sign “last one out, please turn out the light”! Some 40% of all Surinamers live in/around Randstad Nederland today.

You might as well go to Amsterdam and the outskirts to meet most Surinamers, even to this day and a lot of the literature about the country originates there. Even though you can experience authentic Suriname culture in the Randstad, to truly appreciate the country you, of course, have to visit it.

There are a few other tourists and workers who come to Suriname. Bauxite is big so you might meet executives traveling for that purpose, or you might meet a Mormon on a mission, or maybe a humanitarian group or oil prospector, but beyond that, most people you meet will be Surinamers or Dutch/Belgian tourists, most of those on an eco-tour.

How to get here

Getting to Suriname is easy enough but not as easy as you might be used to. From the Netherlands it’s and easy nonstop, served up to 14 times a week or more via KLM, SLM (the Suriname carrier), and Martinair (Dutch charter company.) The latter is the cheapest usually.

From the US, well, it changes so fast and furiously that your best bet is to get to Trinidad and connect from there on Caribbean Airlines (erstwhile BWIA). As far as I know, Trinidad has always had connections to Suriname without any codeshare, connections, or other difficulties. SLM, the Suriname airline, is unreliable. It is hard to contact them even though they ostensibly fly to Miami and have an office there. In May 2007 supposedly the office was there but no flights. There is rumor that they fly to Curacao and Aruba, but while I was awaiting my (Caribbean Airlines) flight, I had heard that the SLM flights were late (by days) and far off schedule. Better to just avoid SLM and stick to Caribbean Airlines.

Caribbean Airlines only flies to Suriname 3 days a week (changing all the time). All flights leave impossibly late (usually about 10pm) from Trinidad and arrive in Suriname also impossibly late (around midnight). The rationale is that passengers have time to get to Trinidad and connect. That’s true. Still, it feels not right when you land at Zanderij (the country’s only airport of any size) and they turn the lights on the runway off right after you land.

Zanderij is usually empty. There are but two gates. Usually only one is in use and maybe 2 flights, at best, arrive per day. You have to walk on the tarmac to get to the terminal, and if you’re handicapped, you’ll find this difficult, not to mention the stairs to climb down to get off of the plane!

If you live in a city that Caribbean Airlines flies to (NY, DC, MIA), you might be able to book a flight directly, 100% on them, but don’t count on it. You will probably be stuck in Trinidad for a day or two.

What does this cost?

A lot. Trinidad is about $500-600 from the Eastern and Mid-US. From there to Suriname seems cheap when you look at the fare at about $99 each way, but then you have to add about $100 in taxes and fees, so figure close to $1K. If you have to stay in Trinidad, figure another $35/night (min) plus $17 departure tax, not included in your ticket.

The fares are so high that it is slightly cheaper to fly from Amsterdam!

What about that Trinidad layover?

This is well-organized if you are in the know. Mr. Eric Telgt, a Surinamer, runs Erosa Guesthouse just a mile from Trinidad’s international airport with free airport transfers. It is $35/night or so – very cheap for Trinidad. The place is a guesthouse and just fine. It has a/c, satellite tv, and is close to a commercial area with a few restaurants. He also runs cheap tours of Trinidad so you can make the most of your layover, if you have one. There is cheap ($1 or so) and frequent mini-bus service just steps from the guesthouse to wherever you might want to go.

If you try to do all this on your own, it costs. Figure about $100 for a hotel, $20 each way for airport transfer, and no info to help you out in Suriname.

Mr. Telgt helped me tremendously by arranging for me to be met in Suriname at midnight and taken to my hotel there for just $10.

Arriving in Suriname

At midnight in a small country, not a lot is happening. If you just arrive unannounced you’ll be in a tough spot. There is nothing around Zanderij airport. No hotels. No rental car. No big city amenities. You can walk out the door and find a cab for at least $40 or you can arrange in advance with your hotel for them to arrange the $10 alternative. The airport is lonely and isolated. It is 40 miles (about) to town with precious little in between.

I stayed at a small guesthouse (6 rooms) in Paramaribo, the capital, and they arranged a bus and Mr. Telgt in Trinidad arranged for his brother to be there as backup.

Visas?

I am lost on this issue. The guidebooks I read and the searches I did all told me that, without a doubt, I needed a visa IN ADVANCE of arriving in Suriname. I mailed my passport to DC, paid $45 plus postage and all that, and got a 1 year, multiple entry visa very fast.

No one checked my passport for a visa before boarding the plane and those who landed in Suriname without a visa were directed to a visa office just to the right of the immigration lines. Apparently you can get a visa at the airport. I wouldn’t count on that and I don’t know what it costs. Not a single source mentioned this possibility but there it was nonetheless.

Yellow fever? Malaria? Typhoid?

Hmm… I’m a seasoned traveler and have never needed any of these. However, I read again and again and was even advised by Passport Health (a national inoculation center) that yellow fever vaccination is a MUST or you will be denied entry to Trinidad and/or Suriname.

Surprise! I “wasted” a whole lot of money ($300+) on these vaccinations only to find that none is required, or if it is, no one cares or checks.

That being said, better safe than sorry. There are a lot of mosquitoes in Suriname and I was bitten all the time unless I had my recommended items… 40% DEET repellent (wonderfully effective). I was sold some kind of spray that protects your clothes for like 5 weeks and 5-10 wash cycles but never used that.

Typhoid, yellow fever, and malaria are, indeed, risks but the risk is very, very low unless you are roughing it out in the middle of nowhere.

Were I to do this trip again, I’d not have had all the inoculations. They seem unnecessary not just for border crossings but also for practical reasons. There just isn’t enough risk to make it worthwhile. I think you’d sooner be poisoned by ecoli at a burger joint in the US.

What to do in Suriname

Well, not much. I think relaxing is number one. It is so quiet, peaceful, quaint, and bucolic that it invites rest.

Beyond that you have casinos which are all kind of downscale but fun here and there and at 3c a pull, you can play slots for quite a while!

Nightlife ends around midnight and much of that revolves around small places serving beer and maybe some dancing. Nothing fancy.

I found it nice to be incredibly lazy. I would hang around the guesthouse by day, wander around the city or rent a bike in the afternoon, and go to bed about 8. On “crazy” nights, I went to bed around midnight.

It’s rainy most of the time and not really that hot as it keeps raining. As such you have a kind of laze that hangs in the air that you pick up fast. It’s a great place to read, chat, hang, and just be.

Drugs are not around. If you’re looking for a marijuana haze and the crime that invites, maybe Jamaica is more your thing.

If you’re tired of being lazy, you can see the dykes, sluits, locks, and other water-management infrastructure that the Dutch installed. You can rent or car or hire a taxi to take you around the outlying area of Wanica which is so sublime and picturesque that it’s almost like a living painting.

You can visit temples, mosques, churches, synagogues, etc. on the fly as you pass them. They crop up unexpectedly.

You can rent a bike (it’s like renting a car – you have to sign your life away!) and peddle around but it’s humid and traffic isn’t friendly. Still, there are lots of bikers. You could head to Independence Square and visit the restored old homes and the fort. Near that are some old and impressive brick structures still used today as government offices. The president’s palace is on the same square.

A block away is Post St. lined with restored old wooden buildings. Quite nice.

A block the other way is the riverfront and you can stroll along there right down to the market. The city’s market only works until about 2pm and it starts early. You’ll find food, mostly, and maybe a couple of other things. The variety of fruit is impressive and you can buy some as snacks. Rambutan, passion fruit, cacao, Barbados cherries, etc., are all in abundance at low prices.

The market area is also the hub of transport. Ask around for wherever you might want to go… just make sure you can get back! Transport is often a morning-only affair.

Around the Krasnapolsky hotel is the city’s shopping main streets. There isn’t much more than a bunch of clothing and shoe stores, a bookstore, and a few others. A couple of hours should do. Prices are pretty high.

What most tourists do is book very expensive tours to “het binneland” (the interior). My rant about eco-tourism follows, but if you like that kind of thing, there are lots of people doing it and most rave about standing in the midst of a forest or meeting “authentic” Maroons or Amerindian “tribes”.

I found it most wonderful to hang around and chat with locals in the capital and have them tell me what to do. I don’t think that’s typical. Most tourists were looking for that jungle experience.

Why I hate eco-tourism

I have to include this brief section so you know how biased I am in this review. Certainly Suriname has incredible ecological resources and attractions. Still, for all the green talk we hear these days, and given the fact that most tourists are from Europe, the “green” is totally lost on the “carbon footprint” of getting there and even once there, you pay a fortune to get into nature.

When you get into nature, you generally have 3 choices. You will visit a forest, a Maroon (escaped African slave) village, or an Amerindian village. None of these is truly “eco”. If you go to the forest, you’ll drive there, wander around a bit or hike, and maybe see a monkey but no Eden like the brochures suggest (no flock of macaws is going to buzz overhead or land peacefully on your shoulder). It’s OK, but for what you pay (like $100/day without overnight), you might as well rent a car for $30 and take a group of friends. For the “authentic” villages, well, they really are interesting as they are quite remote but there’s nothing primitive about these people. They speak fluent Dutch and usually English as well, and they’ll probably dress up and dance for you whence you’ll retire to a 4 or 5* “jungle resort”. These villages get visitors all the time… how else do they support those resorts?

And the notion of these “remote” villages is only half true. They are remote but they are not primitive or otherwise unvisited. They are waiting for tourists. It can be fun and the locals are always engaging, but they are well aware of all the mod-cons, even if they don’t have (or want) all of them.

So all that talk of “green” and “eco” is little more than a feel-good diversion to me. If you truly want to be green and eco-friendly, get a horse, stay home, and google the wonders of Suriname rather than destroy them with you carbon footprint getting there and around.

OK, rant over.

Where to stay

This is a hard question. My favorites are Krasnapolsky, Zus en Zo, and Torarica. Kras is a Stalinist-looking place and somewhat cold and empty. I like it for it’s slightly dated atmosphere and it is a first class hotel with pool and all. It is not luxurious, but it is for Suriname. It is right in the heart of things with all the shops and so forth just steps away. It’s about $100/night. Rooms are what you’d expect of a Holiday Inn or some other mid-range place in the US.

Zus en Zo is a tiny guesthouse with just 6 rooms and is often empty. It is a shared-bath place but incredibly clean and delightfully atmospheric in the sense of old wooden house on stilts. Below the house is restaurant, the next floor is the shop, reception, tv room, etc. and the top floor is the rooms. It’s cheap for Suriname at about $30/night. It is located between the Kras and Torarica (both walking distance) on a nice street across from the Palmentuin, a beautiful park reviled for being dangerous, but hardly.

Torarica is Suriname’s top hotel. It has a pool, a couple of bars and restaurants, and it is an attraction unto itself. It has a casino (ugly, but still somewhat quaint) and its rooms are among Suriname’s nicest, looking something like a Fairfield Inn or some such. At $120+ I’d sooner stay at Zus en Zo 3 (longish) blocks away. Still, there is a little tourist center developed right around it with flower market, several good restaurants, easy to find taxis and more.

The other hotels you might find are the Residence Inn, the Eco Resort, Twenty4, and Albergo Alberga. Residence Inn is not Marriott-affiliated. It’s a big house and nice but a little remote in a nice area of town, about $75/night. Eco is a cheaper version of Torarica (Eco = economic) and about $75/night. Albergo Alberga is located on a beautiful street with old wooden homes and itself is in one of them. It is slightly less and downtown.

I found Zus en Zo to be the best value. If I had more money to spend, Albergo Alberga would be my next choice. If I weren’t paying, I’d choose Kras for at least one night.

Beyond those, there are many, many guesthouses. Most that I haven’t mentioned are somewhat out of town meaning that you’ll need a car.

Suggestions that some guesthouses are “hot pillow” may be true but I did not find that to be an issue. Everywhere I checked was nice and comfortable, basically homey. Nothing was particularly luxurious. I did not find any place I was unwilling to stay at for reasons other than location.

I think you can be at ease no matter where you stay.

Where to eat

This is easy. Chinese. If you don’t like Chinese, I hope you like chicken and rice. That’s about the sum of it. If you want something fancy, there’s not much. Maybe Torarica can fuss for you but you’ll just pay a lot for the common. Basically, expect excellent food served without fanfare.

Chinese is most common. Next is Javanese. Think fried rice every day and you’ll be OK. Chicken will be very tasty but lots of bones.

Just head out or take a cab and there’s plenty of interesting and tasty things to choose from, with chicken and rice prevailing. Egg rolls, curried chicken, spiced chicken, bbq chicken, chicken chow mein… you get the idea.

About $5 for any meal unless you eat in a hotel – about $20 for the same food.

Tours

Tour operators are all about the same and they collude on pricing. You might book a tour with company A only to find that they sold all their places to company B. No appreciable difference among tours.

All are far too expensive for what you get. For example, I went to Brownsberg Park and it was $87 for a day including lunch. Without lunch it was $70. This was in a minivan with a group of other tourists. I think $70 would have paid handily for the 8 of us, or maybe $140, but together we paid $560. For that we could have charted a plane to a truly remote place rather than 3 hours on paved (to some degree or another) roads. And $17 for lunch? Sounds a little steep when full meals are around $5 anywhere around the capital.

On your own

Minibuses run to various places from the main market downtown by the river. You can head east to Albina (nothing to recommend it) and cross the river to French Guyana for a day. The drive is the most interesting part, followed by the river crossing. For about $30 you can have a great trip through the forest to the border town and over and back.

You can head west toward Nickerie, but you’ll need an overnight as it’s far on a rough road. Not recommended.

You can head south to Lelydorp, Domsburg, etc. Well worth it. Maybe an hour each direction. There’s nothing particular to see, but the view and serenity of the Suriname river are beautiful. There are lots of buses on this route so you can get off/on where you want and maybe spend $10-$15 doing it.

What else?

Guidebooks are slim and often incomplete and outdated. The worst is Lonely Planet. (And I’m usually a big LP fan!) The text reads as if they’ve never been there. Inaccuracies abound and the text is limited to but a few pages in a hefty “South America” tome. They make some references to various people to meet at various places but they are long gone if, in fact, they were ever there. I found the text so “off” as to be at times unbelievable. Forget it.

The only other guide in English is the Footprint Guide, also contained in a hefty South America volume. Again few pages but remarkably more complete than LP and definitely more recent and it does seem like they’ve been there. As wanting as this guide is, it’s the best in English, if 10 pages is enough for an entire nation.

If you can read Dutch, the best of all guides is the Wereldwijzer Suriname. You can get it at any Dutch bookstore (I got it a bol.nl) or in Suriname. It is complete, informative, updated, accurate, and engaging. The woman who wrote it, Tessa Leuwsha, currently lives in Suriname and oddly enough I ran into her at the McDonald’s (the only one in the country.) She speaks perfect English so I hope one day that guide will appear in English.

Summary

Suriname is expensive to get to and expensive to visit. You need a sense of adventure to visit from the US and if you intend to scrape beyond the surface, a knowledge of Dutch is essential. Even though almost everyone speaks good English, the place runs on Dutch so at least learn a little as it will increase your ability to get around.




Recommended: Yes

Best Suited For: Friends
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime