Thankfully there was no run-around at the Saint Laurent-du-Maroni consulate and I had my visa, or tourist card, that I needed to present at the border to get my passport stamped, in less than ten minutes and for fewer dollars than the on-line fee. It was a little before noon, two hours before the next ferry to Suriname, enough time to zip over to the tourist office with hopes that it would have WiFi. It had been nearly two days since I’d had access to it, as there was none to be found in rural French Guiana, unlike Brasil where I had ample opportunity every day.
The tourist office did have WiFi and also bikes for rent. It also abided by the French style of closing for lunch, so after thirty minutes I had to sit outside the office to finish off my blogging duties. I could accept that, but I was disappointed that the 8 á Huit convenience store also closed for lunch, denying me the chance to replace the liter bottle of mint syrup that I had polished off in three days.
A local supermarket remained open. It carried some French fare, including madeleines, which I needed to restock, but not the sirop de menthe. I’ll just have to wait until May for my next menthe á l’eau, though I certainly enjoyed my three days of imbibing the beverage. Usually I can make a liter bottle last a week or more, but in these circumstances I drank it non-stop, adding a dollop of the syrup to my water bottle four or five times a day with that sweetest of nectars.
When I got stamped out of French Guiana before boarding the ferry, the customs official complimented me for traversing the country in five days. I was the only passenger on the ferry not making the crossing in a car. It’s not a very busy crossing, as there are only four ferries a day with a capacity for just eight cars. I sat on a bench for the twenty-minute crossing until it was in the sun. Then I went and sat in the shade between the eight cars lined up in pairs.
With so few people crossing no one was hanging out changing money on either side of the river, but there was an exchange bureau right after one gained entry to Suriname, which surprisingly gave a more generous rate than the official rate.
No one was out and about in the midday heat on foot or driving, so I was caught by surprise when I got a couple blocks away to the highway and was accosted by a car driving directly at me on the “wrong” side of the road, as there was no warning that Suriname, though it be a former Dutch colony, had linked up with British Guiana to the north and drove English-style on the left side of the road. Later down the road there was an occasional reminder, but I hadn’t noticed any on arrival.
There wasn’t any immediate hint of Suriname’s Dutch underpinnings other than an occasional sign in Dutch. But as the miles unraveled and the road remained pancake flat, it took on the flavor of the Netherlands. For ninety miles I didn’t need my small chain ring, by far the longest stretch of this trip, until I came to a huge bridge over the Suriname River into Paramaribo. A sign warned six per cent grade. That seemed like nothing after the many ten per cent climbs I had been subjected to in Brasil and French Guiana. I was actually passing the backed up traffic crawling up and over the bridge.
There hadn’t been much traffic until I closed in on Paramaribo, the capital of this country of 600,000 people with just under half of them living in this port city. The outskirts of the city lent a Dutch flavor lined with small tidy homes with well-manicured yards adorned with flowers.
He wasn’t the first person at a grocery store who reacted with generosity when I was meager with my purchases. In Brasil when I walked out of a store with two packets of Ramen, two bananas and two small boxes of chocolate milk, a store employee gave me four rials, a dollar, and told me to go across the street and treat myself to a coconut.
I also elicited an act of generosity in French Guiana from a guy on a crew laying cable along the road. I had stopped beside his truck to take advantage of its shade. After a brief exchange he gave me his phone number and email if I had any need of help and then offered me twenty euros, which I could hardly accept. He was a Haitian who had come to French Guiana for work and was earning more money than he imagined possible.
During the many days of this trip straining up steep climbs by day’s end my legs are fully depleted. I collapse into my tent famished and exhausted with barely enough time to eat as much as I’d like before needing to sleep. When the going is flat the legs hardly register the pedaling and don’t want to stop. I passed up one optimum forest campsite after another in the waning light of Suriname, finally venturing into the forest through a recently deforested patch. As with French Guiana the ants were not an issue.
Rafael, my Warmshowers host in Belém, explained Brasil had created super ants after trying to wipe them out with strong pesticides. Those that survived are not to be deterred. When he saw the gaping circular holes in my tent when I spread it out to dry, he immediately recognized the ants responsible—sauba ants, known as scissor ants, for their ability to cut through leaves or tents.
I’ve gone even longer without without a flat tire or any mechanical concerns, over a thousand miles. My only equipment failure has been the lense popping out of my glasses. It happened a day from Cayenne, where I knew I could find an optician who could replace the lost screw. I could make do with my spare pair of glasses with my previous prescription until then. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a lost screw, but an actual break of the frame, a frame the optician didn’t have. Nor did I have any better luck in Paramaribo. The difference in lenses is negligible, so I can make do until I return home in less than a week. Hard to believe it is coming to a close and the Carnegie in Georgetown is nigh.
2 comments:
Are they speaking Dutch?
Some Dutch, but local dialects as well, and most people speak some English, so I can dive right in with that without asking if they speak it.
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