Coverage / Suriname
Suriname
South America
The smallest country in South America and the only Dutch-speaking one, Suriname sits on the Guiana Shield between Guyana and French Guiana. More than ninety percent of it is unbroken tropical rainforest, home to jaguars, giant river otters and eight species of monkey, drained by wide rivers that are the only roads into the interior. Its coast holds the UNESCO-listed wooden capital of Paramaribo and one of the most mixed populations on earth, with Creole, Hindustani, Javanese, Maroon, Indigenous and Chinese roots living side by side.
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What you can do in Suriname
Wildlife Safaris
- Central Suriname Nature ReserveFeb Mar Apr Aug Sep Oct NovThe Central Suriname Nature Reserve is one of the last places you can stand in tropical rainforest that runs unbroken to the horizon in every direction, roughly 1.6 million hectares with no roads, no logging and no villages, inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2000. Its wildlife is the full Guianan cast: jaguar, puma, tapir, giant armadillo, giant river otter and eight species of primate, among them the red-faced black spider monkey and howler monkeys whose dawn roar carries for miles. The reserve's window on all this is Raleighvallen, a cluster of rapids on the Coppename River where a field station sits under the canopy. From here two experiences define a visit. One is the climb of the Voltzberg, a bare granite dome rising 240 metres straight out of the forest, a hard humid scramble rewarded by a view over an ocean of trees. The other is the lek of the Guianan cock-of-the-rock, where flame-orange males gather at dawn on the forest floor to display, one of the great birding spectacles of South America. Reaching Raleighvallen is part of the point, a long river journey by dugout that leaves the modern country behind.
- GalibiMar Apr May Jun JulGalibi is where giant leatherback turtles haul out of the Atlantic at night to lay their eggs in the sand, and few wildlife encounters anywhere match the sight of a creature the size of a rowing boat dragging itself up a moonlit beach. The reserve protects the only beaches in the Atlantic region where the olive ridley turtle nests in numbers, and it draws four species in all, the leatherback, the green, the olive ridley and the hawksbill. Set on the northeast coast where the Marowijne River meets the ocean, opposite French Guiana, Galibi is the homeland of the Kalina people, whose villages of Christiaankondre and Langamankondre sit beside the reserve and whose guides walk visitors along the nesting beach after dark. Nights here follow the turtles: a female cresting the tideline, digging her nest, laying and covering it before returning to the sea, while hatchlings from earlier clutches scramble down to the surf. The reserve was established in 1969 and is co-managed with the local community, so a visit puts money directly into the villages that guard the beach. Beyond the turtles the estuary holds scarlet ibis, manatees and dolphins in its brackish channels.
Witness / Attend
- Keti KotiParamariboJulKeti Koti, Sranan Tongo for the chain is cut, is the day Suriname remembers the abolition of slavery, and Paramaribo is where the nation gathers to mark it. On 1 July 1863 the emancipation law took effect and cannon were fired from Fort Zeelandia; today that same date brings the city into the streets in a mix of solemn remembrance and open celebration. The morning holds ceremony, wreaths laid at the Kwakoe monument, the statue of a man breaking his chains that stands for freedom, and gatherings that carry the weight of a history not yet a lifetime cool. By afternoon the mood turns to festival: women in the koto and angisa, the Creole dress and elaborately folded headscarf whose folds carry coded messages, parade through the centre in the Bigi Spikri, and the streets fill with winti drumming, the susa dance, kaseko bands and Afro-Surinamese food. It is a participatory commemoration rather than a show, an emancipation day that also honours the Maroons who freed themselves generations earlier, and a visitor is welcomed to witness and to join. Cultural organisations, above all NAKS, carry the music, dance and craft that give the day its shape.
- Upper Suriname RiverFeb Mar Apr Aug Sep Oct NovThe Upper Suriname River is where you meet one of the oldest free African-descended cultures in the Americas on its own ground. The Saamaka are Maroons, descendants of people who escaped the Dutch plantations, fought a long guerrilla war from the forest, and forced a peace treaty in 1762 that recognised their freedom more than a century before slavery was abolished on the coast. Along the Boven-Suriname, above the road head at Atjoni, dozens of their villages sit on the riverbanks, reached only by dugout canoe through sets of rapids, and this is the living heart of a culture that kept West African language, religion, music and craft alive in the rainforest. A stay here is spent among that daily life: the polyrhythms of the apinti and other drums, the susa dance, woodcarving whose geometric patterns are a language of their own, cassava processing and the winti spiritual world. Visitors sleep in simple lodges on forest islands, join guided walks to nearby villages, swim in the clear river and travel by korjaal between the rapids. It is culture witnessed as a guest rather than a spectator, and because the lodges are community-linked, the visit supports the villages that share it.
Best months at a glance
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