Sea Turtles in Suriname

We got up early for our bus from Guyana to Suriname at 5am. Too early, as it turns out, as it arrived at 6, before bouncing along the road to Moleson Creek. This small town is on the Courantyne River, which forms the border with Suriname. We stamped out of the country here, and boarded a car ferry to take us the 30 minutes to the other side.

The immigration process on the other side can be a very slow affair - locals in the know sprint off the boat to get in line first. We adopted this policy - several of us walking quickly, keeping just behind the border guard leading the way. Jo sabotaged one guy ahead of us by accidentally standing on his flip-flop, and we got a prized spot near the front of the line. We got through quickly, but then had to wait for an hour or so as the other people in our bus took their time to get past the queue. We finally arrived in Paramaribo, the Surinamese capital, 12 hours after we'd set off.

The palm garden in Paramaribo

Paramaribo, for us, wasn't the most appealing of cities. There are plenty of white, balconied colonial houses along a few streets near the Suriname River, a small fort and a public garden filled with hundreds of tall palm trees. On Sunday mornings, people get together to have birdsong competitions where they pit their prized 'twatwas' against each other. Unfortunately, the timing didn't work out for us to see this. We did see lots of people carrying birdcages around during the week though! Apart from that, we found the city a little lacking in soul. It was pretty quiet and felt a lot more like a small country town than a capital city. It's very spread out and most people have cars to get around. We found it very difficult to find essentials like grocers and pharmacies - there didn't seem to be any in the centre at all. Although almost every shop calls itself a 'supermarket', they are more like corner shops and don't stock fresh produce, which limited our ability to cook for ourselves.

Colonial buildings and cars in Paramaribo

Apart from the capital city, the other things to do in Suriname are go to the jungle (moth-y) or go to a sea turtle nesting site. We opted for the latter, but baulked at the 175 Euros quoted by tour agencies for a single night. Instead, we took a bus to Albina, the border town with French Guiana, then negotiated a small boat to take us the 2 hours down the river estuary to Christaankondre. This is a village at the mouth of the river, close to the Atlantic Ocean, which is completely cut off from the rest of the country except by boat. We took a basic room in the only place to stay and joined a small tour group to go and see the turtles that night.

Christiaankondre - in the middle of nowhere

We were rewarded with a full moon giving us great light to search for turtle tracks along the beach. This is the easiest way to find them as at the top of the trail they dig a hole to lay in while laying their eggs. They lay between 100-200, then bury them in sand and dash back to the sea. We found several turtles, and they were enormous - maybe 2 metres in length. We saw every stage in the process: the finding a suitable spot and clearing it; the digging the hole; the laying; the burying; and the dash back to sea We also saw a couple of people in this very remote area who were probably stealing the eggs to sell. Although the beaches here have a nominal guard, it is very easy to go there when the guards are not.

The back of a green turtle laying eggs

The next morning, we found another boat to take us back to Albina, the border town. We took yet another boat across the Maroni River into French Guiana. The border process on either side was the most lax we've seen anywhere in the world, and this time there were no queues to negotiate! We are going to spend about a week in this French territory, before flying into Brazil.

A Very Smelly City

We departed Curaçao late in the evening, after a great few days there. As we mentioned previously, one of our main reasons for visiting was to use it as a stop off point between Colombia and Guyana, thus avoiding Venezuela. We found there was a cheap daily flight from Curaçao to Georgetown, the Guyanese capital, with InselAir.

Georgetown, viewed from the air

What we didn't realise when we booked this flight, was how notoriously bad InselAir is. As it is one of the only carriers offering short hops around the Caribbean and the north coast of South America, it has a bit of a monopoly. It seems this means it can run its flights whenever it wants, and the scheduled times mostly bore no resemblance to the actual departures!  Our flight was meant to leave at 9:30 pm, the last of the evening from Curaçao. It actually went at 11:10 pm, from a different departure gate. The time and departure was announced suddenly - up till then we'd heard nothing about it. We were quite fortunate it seems, as three other InselAir flights scheduled to leave before ours had not even arrived when we were boarding. Art, our host in Curaçao, told us the InselAir flights are always like this!

St George's Cathedral, in Georgetown

Anyway, we eventually arrived safely in Georgetown at 1am. We had been a little worried that our taxi pick up would not be there, or the driver would be an axe-murderer (safety is quite an issue in Georgetown, especially late at night). However, all went smoothly. Other than the fact that the airport is not in fact in Georgetown but out in the jungle nearly an hour's drive away... hence it was full of moths. BIG ones. Like, the biggest moths I've ever seen, all at once. It was a complete nightmare for me, and when we got in the taxi and there was one inside, I nearly had a heart attack! Luckily, once in the city, moth sizes / numbers became a lot more manageable.

Interior of St George's Cathedral

Guyana is probably the least well known and the least travelled country in all of South America. This little nation, with a population of only 750,000 people, used to be a British colony and only became independent in 1966. The British influence is evident in several respects: the official language is English (it's the only country on the continent that speaks English as its first language), they drive on the left hand side of the road, they are passionate about cricket, and they are fond of tea (in teapots). Oh, and the local beer, Banks Beer, first brewed while Guyana was still a British colony, is probably the best national lager we've had in South America. The country is also very multicultural - another legacy of the British, who brought slaves over from Africa and indentured labourers from India. The largest ethnic groups today are East Indian and African. It is the poorest country in South America, behind Bolivia and Paraguay, and the local currency is the Guyanese dollar, of which there are about 300 to a pound. It's quite entertaining when you hear that your dinner will be 1000 dollars! Given that it is so poor, it seems strange how expensive it is - just a few days here will severely dent a backpacker's budget, we found out.

The City Hall in Georgetown

When we arrived in Georgetown itself, the first thing that hit us was the smell... not in a good way! The city has open sewers, is very dirty, and all water channels / rivers are literally black. Everywhere stinks of poo. However, we got used to this fairly quickly! Georgetown also has a reputation for being unsafe, as I mentioned - there is a high incidence of petty crime and certain areas are definite no-go zones for tourists. We were a little nervous at first to just walk around on our own, but our host said it would be fine, so we spent a lot of time just strolling round the city absorbing the atmosphere. We had no problems at all; in fact. on the contrary, people were mostly pretty friendly and curious to see white faces. While Georgetown has quite a gritty feel to it, we enjoyed it, as it is just so completely different to anywhere else in South America. It was great seeing Asian shops everywhere, hearing English spoken (albeit in a Caribbean accent we often couldn't understand!), watching cricket with locals, and hearing Indian-influenced styles of music.

The 1763 Monument, in Revolution Square

We explored the city over 2 days. There aren't many attractions, but the huge wooden cathedral, St George's, was quite impressive. It is apparently the largest wooden church in the world - the locals are quite proud of this! We also visited the City Hall, another colonial wooden structure, decaying somewhat but still very nice; the National Library; and the National Museum. The museum's main exhibition was about Guyana's big festival here, Mashramani, which takes place in February every year to commemorate the anniversary of the country becoming a republic. The photos and costumes on display, and the excitement of local people when discussing this, suggested this country does have one thing in common with the rest of the continent - it loves its carnival! Another day, we walked over to Revolution Square, where there is an interesting African themed memorial to a slave revolt that took place here in 1763. Passing the Botanical Gardens and Zoo en route here we randomly saw two beautiful macaws flying right overhead, reminding us just how close to the jungle Georgetown really is.

Old fashioned adverts lining Georgetown's sea wall...

They even had a Marmite advert!

We had planned to go straight from Georgetown over the border to Suriname. Suriname is the only country for which we need a visa - well, a 'tourist card' for us as UK citizens. The process of applying for this was a little complicated. First we had to go to the Surinamese embassy, which was cunningly concealed in a posh residential area of Georgetown. We spent a while walking around looking for it, and eventually located it with the help of some locals. The security guard at the embassy asked us, did we have a photocopy of our passport photo pages? Forewarned about this, we said yes. Did we have a photocopy of our Guyana entry stamp page? Erm, no. Did we have 35 US dollars each? Erm no, but we had $25, which was what it had cost last week. The lady packed us off to change some more Guyanese dollars into USD, and get the other photocopy. We later found out the charge for the tourist card had gone up only 2 days ago - doh!

Aerial view of the jungle near Kaieteur Falls

When we returned to the embassy with all we needed, the security lady finally let us into the office itself. The lady at the desk there told us we'd need to leave our passports and come and pick them up again that afternoon. We couldn't do that, we said, as we had a tour booked that afternoon. We asked if we could come back the following morning instead (Friday). Well, the office MIGHT be closed, she said, as there MIGHT be a national holiday. Could she find out, we asked. No, no-one knew, apparently. There were some local elections happening and the embassy staff didn't yet know if they'd be working or not! We grew steadily more frustrated as we knew the embassy would definitely be shut at the weekend. Eventually we pestered her enough that she managed to get our tourist cards issued straight away! Not sure why you normally have to wait until the afternoon...

At Kaieteur Falls

The reason we couldn't go back to the embassy that afternoon was that we had booked ourselves on a trip to Kaieteur Falls, perhaps Guyana's most spectacular natural attraction. The majority of the country is pristine jungle (well, with the odd gold mine), and the Kaieteur waterfall is deep in the interior, hidden in the rainforest. The only option for getting there, other than a 5 day hike, is a short flight in a small 12 seater plane. It was an expensive tour, but 100% worth it! We flew for an hour over a sea of trees, seeing nothing but this huge expanse of green for miles and miles, interrupted only by the muddy brown rivers snaking their way across the country. As we neared our landing point, the pilot made a big turn, and we had our first sight of the Kaieteur Falls. Wow!

The beautiful Kaieteur Falls

We landed at an airstrip literally in the middle of the jungle, and had 2 hours on a guided walk that took us to three different viewpoints of the falls. It has to be one of the most spectacular in the world, not just for its size (the highest single drop waterfall in the world) but for its stunning setting. The waterfall drops from a rocky outcrop, and all around is rainforest. The power of the water was incredible, even though our guide told us it was currently only about 60% full due to the recent dry weather. In the mist around the falls we could see rainbows. I'm so glad we made it here, as it was really something special. We didn't want to leave, and wished the other tourists who accompanied us on the flight would stop taking photos occasionally so we could just gaze in peace for longer!

Rainbows in the mist

While there is doubtless plenty more to see and do in Guyana, chiefly jungle-based adventures, we are trying to push on through these three little countries at the top of the continent. The prices here are high, and we still have a lot more to squeeze in before we return home in June. So for now, it's goodbye Guyana, as we head on to Suriname (a gruelling 12 hour bus-boat-bus-bus journey, more on that next entry!)

View down the valley from the bottom of the falls

Curaçao Drinking in Curaçao

In order to skip the dangerous Venezuela, we found the cheapest flight to Guyana would go via the Dutch island of Curaçao. We decided to spend a few days there to do a few dives and drink the famous liqueur. We also discovered that the main town, Willemstad, is a UNESCO world heritage site!

We didn't get any diving photos, so here's one of a beach instead

The dives here were great - we were collected by the guys that run Scubaçao (unfortunately not pronounced Scuba-Cow) and driven around to the dive sites. It made a nice change to be able to just walk off the beach and dive straight away without having to take a boat. The visibility was amazing, around 30m, and there was plenty of healthy coral, lots of different fish and even some turtles. The best site was probably the one called 'Tugboat' - named after a tug that sunk there when a ship dropped an anchor on it. It is now home to several schools of fish and was fascinating to swim around.

The colourful waterfront in Willemstad

When we weren't diving, we walked around the old city, which was founded in 1634. It spent much of its life as a slave trading port, and there are a couple of good museums dedicated to that awful subject today. The slave trade, the proximity to Spanish-speaking Venezuela, its status as part of the Netherlands and today's tourism has led to an interesting mix of cultures. The local language, Papiamentu, is a combination of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English and we found it strange to be able to pick up words of it here and there.

The Queen Emma floating bridge across Willemstad harbour

Willemstad is now home to a unique floating bridge across the harbour entrance, which swings open when a ship needs to pass. Often, those ships are cruise ships, and the island is full of people supping cocktails made from the local blue curaçao liqueur. From our experience, it's used to make rather sickly blue-green cocktails that pack quite a punch.

Cocktails!

We're now recovering from our hangovers and flying back to the mainland, to Guyana.

Golden Showers - Well, Gold and Showers

We had enjoyed our time in San Agustín and Tierradentro as they're a little further off the gringo trail (especially Tierradentro). However, now it was time to head firmly back into tourist central - Bogotá, Colombia's capital. We took a nightbus from San Agustín that arrived at 5am, and spent a lot of time drinking coffee until we could check in to our AirBnB later on. We'd chosen to base ourselves in the historical district, La Candelaria, which is where most of the attractions are, and the AirBnB was great - run by a very friendly French-Colombian family.

The main square, Plaza de Bolívar, in Bogotá

So, Bogotá. Bogotá is big.Very big. In terms of population, it is the fourth largest city in all of South America and the second largest we've been to behind Buenos Aires, with nearly 10 million people. It is also high, at about 2650m - the third highest capital city in the world after La Paz and Quito. And based on our experience, Bogotá is also rainy. It rained every day while were here, including some enormous thunderstorms that flooded some streets and caused delays at the airport when the control tower was struck by lightning! The weather liked to fool us by appearing beautifully sunny every morning. Thus without fail we'd say, 'shall we take the raincoats? Nah, we won't need them.' And without fail we'd get soaked. Apparently this much rain is unusual for the time of year, and probably due to the El Niño phenomenon.

Incredibly detailed figures in the Gold Museum

There's plenty to do in Bogotá, and we duly visited the majority of its major tourist sites. One of the highlights was the Museo de Oro (Gold Museum), which is one of the best museums we've been to in South America so far. It tells the history of gold in Colombia, focusing on pre-Columbian times and explaining how gold was obtained, what was made with it, the indigenous mythologies surrounding it, and so on. There were plenty of stunning gold items on display, some dating from over 2000 years ago yet incredibly complex, intricate and beautiful in their designs.

Street art on the graffiti tour

Aside from the Gold Museum, we spent one morning doing the popular graffiti tour around La Candelaria and the city centre. This was quite interesting but the group was huge - over 30 people! - and the guide focused more on the artists' styles than on the actual content / meaning behind the street art. We'd have liked to know WHY a given artist had chosen to portray a toucan with a halo, rather than how he'd done it! We also took the cable car (so many cities in South America have cable cars!) to the top of Cerro Monserrate, up at 3100m. The view of the city was quite nice, but sadly the clouds rolled in, the vista deteriorated extremely quickly and the torrential rain began anew. Another day we visited the Police Museum, which included quite a lot of interesting information on the hunt for Pablo Escobar in the early 1990s. On display there was even a desk Escobar owned, which on first sight looks normal, but when kicked in a certain way reveals a false back and false bottom, with several secret compartments. There was also a sophisticated machine Escobar had used for counting banknotes; the only other one of these in the country at the time was in the national bank!

Somewhat hazy view of Bogotá from Cerro Monserrate

Wanted poster for Pablo Escobar, in the Police Museum

We had heard a lot about the Salt Cathedral in the town of Zipaquirá, which is often described as 'the marvel of Colombia'. Understandably, we were keen to visit, and as Zipaquirá is not far from Bogotá, we made a day trip. It took us an hour and a half from La Candelaria using the Transmilenio bus-metro thing (more on that to follow!) and then a local bus. On arrival, we were horrified to find the ticket price for extranjeros (foreigners) was 50,000 pesos. That is, £10. Which is a LOT in Colombia! For reference, the Gold Museum cost 3,000. Even for Colombians the price was 28,000, which would definitely price a lot of locals out of coming here. Pretty ridiculous. Still, we thought, we're here now, and we reluctantly paid up.

The main nave in the Salt Cathedral

The Salt Cathedral is basically a huge church built underground in a salt mine, complete with the stations of the cross, also made of salt, on the way. I have to say that the cathedral itself was pretty cool - it was incredible to be in this huge chamber with high ceilings and massive pillars, all deep underground and mostly built of salt, granite and marble. The stations of the cross were also well done, we thought - mostly very understated and simple. However, what we didn't like was the way the entire experience had been made into a massive tourist trap. You had to go round with a guide (totally unnecessary), there was cheesy music playing, and at the end we were greeted with rows of the usual artesania shops. Yes, souvenir shops. And a coffee shop. Down a salt mine! On top of this, anything extra had to be paid for on top of the crazy first price; extra if you wanted to go in the museum, extra to see more of the mine, extra even for toilet paper...! We were very disappointed overall as we felt the whole place was a bit of a farce and a complete rip off. But ho hum, we had to see it really.

One of the Stations of the Cross

Our spirits that day weren't improved by the arduous journey back to Bogotá from Zipaquira. This was our first experience of the Bogotá traffic, which is quite legendary. You'd think in the late afternoon the traffic would be okay coming back into the city, just bad leaving it. You'd think wrong. It took us 3.5 hours to get back. As I mentioned before, part of the journey involved the Transmilenio, which is Bogotá's equivalent of a metro. But rather than a train, it is a bendy bus, 2 or 3 carriages long. Many things about this bus challenged our brains. For example, why have an 'express' bus when it can only go at the same speed as the non-express buses? They all go in the same lane and can't overtake. Or, why not let all the people leaving the bus at the stop get off before everyone else shoves their way on? And, why plan your rush hour schedule so that 90% of the buses coming through the busiest platform at 6.30 pm are 'en transito' (in transit) and not stopping?! Maybe we were just in a bad mood, but we were tearing our hair out a little! Oh for the good old Tube.

View of Bogotá from our AirBnB

On our last day in the city, we decided to treat ourselves to a posh restaurant as a belated celebration of our being away for one year. Said restaurant, Matiz, was 8 or 9 km from where we were staying. Given our experience of the traffic, we left nearly an hour to get there (by taxi). It took us an hour and a half. The taxi driver seemed determined to use the big main road, despite it being completely rammed with traffic. At one point he turned off, and we breathed a sigh of relief, thinking he'd finally seen sense and was going to go via the nearly empty side roads instead. But no, after a few blocks it became clear he was instead just heading across to the other big main road. Which, surprise surprise, was almost stationary. Dare we suggest that if more drivers were willing to use non main roads, the traffic problem might be slightly less bad?!

More street art around La Candelaria

Anyway, end of traffic related ranting! Luckily the restaurant had kept our table and we enjoyed a fantastic meal - a tasting menu of I don't know how many courses that has to be one of the best meals of the trip so far. Cocktails and then wine pairings with each course meant we soon forgot our frustration with the journey. It was a nice way to say goodbye to Colombia, and to Latin America for a while as we move on to destinations more Caribbean in their nature. Next, the island of Curaçao, before we head to the Guyanas.

Guerrillas in the Mountains?

Until quite recently, the area around Tierradentro and San Agustín in the south of Colombia was not the safest due to guerrilla activity. There was an attack on police in September 2014 in Tierradentro and military operations near San Agustín in May 2010. Therefore, when we came across a band of heavily armed men dressed in fatigues while walking on a small path towards the ancient tombs of Tierradentro we felt some trepidation. We're now pretty sure that they were army, though, and we had a nice chat with them about the area, although didn't bring up anything too political!

The path where we came across the army - we obviously didn't try to get any pictures of them!

We'd left the touristy village of Salento for Popayán, one of the larger cities in the south of the country. It's known as the White City (see Arequipa, Perú and Sucre, Bolivia) and lived up to its name, with plenty of colonial buildings and churches lining the streets. We didn't spend much time here, though - we were just using it as a base to get to the UNESCO-listed archaeological sites at Tierradentro and San Agustín.

Popayán - the (a) White City

Not much is known about the pre-Colombian civilisations in this area. All that is left now are underground tombs, particularly in Tierradentro, and hundreds of statues and rock carvings, primarily in San Agustín. They date to the first millennium AD and no-one knows what happened to the cultures that created them - they'd disappeared by the time the Spanish arrived in the 1500's.

A tomb in Tierradentro

The tombs in Tierradentro are situated on four different hilltops around the town of San Andrés de Pisambalá. They consist of a large well of around 5-8m depth which gives access to a cave where bodies were interred in pots. Many of the tombs have no decoration, and many have been looted and damaged. However, some still show colourful, but simple, painted geometric patterns and creepy faces carved into the walls and supporting columns.

Statues guarding a tomb in San Agustín

Although Tierradentro has a few statues, the majority are found at many sites around San Agustín. Again, not much is known about them, but there are many hypotheses as to their meaning. They range from 1m to 7m in height and take on the form of humans, animals and a mix of the two. Some are thought to be gods and others shamans. To our eyes, they appear quite aggressive, with many bearing their teeth and others seeming to represent child sacrifice.

An owl/eagle and snake god?

The town of San Agustín is set in a beautiful location, close to the source of the Magdalena River, which we'd seen before in Honda and Mompox. Here, though, the river was much narrower and raged far below in a deep canyon. We found a good way to visit the river and a number of the archaeological sites was on horseback. This was our first time on horses, and we had a good time sitting on them while they did whatever they wanted!

Jo and her horse, Carmela

From San Agustín, we took a night bus up to Bogotá, which will be our final stop in Colombia before we fly up to the Dutch island of Curaçao for a few days. We're using this as a stop on the way to Guyana, avoiding the currently unstable and dangerous Venezuela.