Suriname
Plantation Owners of Suriname
We traveled to Suriname because . . . honestly . . . because we wanted to visit every country in South America. It really was not on our bucket list, but we were quite pleasantly surprised by the adventure it brought us.
The adventure started when we arrived in the morning at the Santa Cruz, Bolivia airport three hours before our flights to Suriname were to depart. I had found quite reasonably priced tickets from to Paramaribo, Suriname. They were not the most convenient, requiring plane changes in Sao Paulo and Belem, Brazil, as well as an overnight in Cayenne, French Guinea, but they were half the price of any other routing, and we were on vacation and had plenty of time. When we tried to check in at GOL Airlines, the ticketing agent asked for our Brazilian visas. I explained we were not staying in Brazil; we were just in transit to our next destination. She explained that would be acceptable if we were flying through just one Brazilian airport arriving and departing on international flights, but the flight from Sao Paulo to Belem was a domestic flight and we needed a visa. Ouch! It made total sense once she explained it, but I had missed this “minor” fact completely when planning the trip. In short, she would not let us board.
The Santa Cruz airport is not large. One small café. One travel agent. A few airlines. We were able to get on Wi-Fi and discovered a flight leaving that evening on COPA from Santa Cruz to Panama, connecting to another COPA flight arriving around 2am in Paramaribo. Great news. It would cost us a lot of money, but at least we could get to Paramaribo in time to catch our noon flight inland the following day.
During this time at the airport, while trying to figure out how we were going to get ourselves to Suriname, we decided to grab a bite to eat at the one and only café. I ordered a small savory roll (the British call it a pie); Ginny ordered something else to eat as well as a chocolate shake. I broke a tooth in half on the pie; it plagued me for the rest of the trip. And Ginny developed food poisoning from the shake, from which she suffered mightily for the next 7 days.
Meanwhile, the COPA desk personnel informed us that they could not issue any tickets at the airport. The travel agent informed us that they could accept only cash (no credit cards) at the airport. And we were talking about a non-trivial amount of money for these tickets (>$3,000). Our only recourse was to drive to downtown Santa Cruz and purchase the new tickets from a travel agent. Nick, our Bolivian tour guide, and his wife let us rest for an hour or so at their office and then drove us to the airport in time to make our new flights. Thank you, Nick!
We arrived at the Paramaribo airport in the wee hours of the morning. I do not recall who helped us find an accommodation for the few hours that night, but it was in what we would call a backpackers’ hostel. A caretaker met our taxi at the entrance to hand us a key and then said good night. Three flights up; no elevator. Four hours of sleep (after sleeping in a car the night before).
The next morning we took this GUM Airways plane from the domestic Zorg en Hoop Airport in Paramaribo 150 miles to the Kabalebo Airstrip for 3 nights at the Kabalebo Nature Resort in the remote rainforest of Central Suriname. One of the first things the local guide did was to take us to see a plane that crashed in 1965 at the Kabalebo Airstrip (see photo below). I’m glad we saw this after our flight.
Our stay at Kabalebo was terrific with lots of hikes, canoe trips on the river, many new bird sightings, and this great poison dart frog who met us on one trail.
Most of the resort is situated at one end of the dirt runway (don’t worry about the noise; there is just one plane a day) but we stayed in a very private cabin at the far other end of the runway. The staff shuttled us back and forth to our cabin in a golf cart; not bad! Here is our cabin, with the “runway” in the foreground.
The highlight of our trip to Suriname, however, occurred upon our return to Paramaribo where we were treated to an experiential history of the Jews of Suriname, led by Marina da Costa, a descendent of 17th century Jewish immigrants to the country. As we walked the streets of the now abandoned city of Jodensavanne (aka “Jewish savannah”), we learned from Marina how her ancestors arrived on the northern shores of South America during the first half of the 17th century to escape persecution in Europe (Marina’s family came from Portugal). The British colonial government offered the settlers complete freedom of religion.
The Jews established sugar plantations, had their own justice system, their own schools, and built their first synagogue as early as 1670. In short, they operated almost as an independent Jewish State within the colony of Suriname. A second synagogue was built in 1685; using today’s terminology, one was orthodox and one was conservative. By the end of the 17th century, 400 sugar plantations existed in Suriname (now a Dutch colony, after England traded Suriname to the Netherlands in return for New Amsterdam, aka New York City), and thousands of slaves worked on them. Around 30% of these plantations were owned by Jews.
From 1690 to 1722, a series of slave revolts occurred, targeting all slave owners including Jews. At the same time, the price of sugar cane declined making it less profitable to raise sugar cane. Slowly, the plantation industry disappeared and most Jews migrated out of Jodensavanne to Paramaribo to undertake other trades. In 1832, the synagogue and most of Jodensavanne burned to the ground, and since then the forest has been taking over what was once a thriving city. Here is part of the cemetery.
Here is what is left of the second synagogue, as well as the “new” synagogue in Paramaribo.
© Alan M. Davis
If you enjoyed this story, consider buying my book,
Unusual Latin America (and Antarctica): Traveling on the Edge. It contains this and twelve other stories of our adventures in Central and South America as well as Antarctica.
