Suriname in 8 days: Paramaribo's wooden city, the Upper Suriname river and Galibi

Day 2 — Commewijne and the plantations

• 09:00 — Across the Suriname river to Commewijne, by ferry or over the Jules Wijdenbosch bridge.
• The old plantations — Frederiksdorp, Peperpot, Mariënburg — are the sugar and coffee estates the colony ran on, some restored and some left to the forest. Mariënburg’s rusting sugar factory is extraordinary and grim.
• The best way to do it is by bicycle, which several operators arrange — flat roads along the river dykes past the estates.
• 16:00 — Fort Nieuw Amsterdam, an open-air museum at the confluence, and the dolphin-watching boats that go out at dusk for the Guiana dolphins in the estuary.

Day 3 — Upriver

• 06:00 — The road south to Atjoni, about three hours, then a dugout canoe up the Upper Suriname river for one to three hours depending on the lodge.
• The river is the road. You pass villages, people washing, boats of goods going up and timber coming down.
• Afternoon — Arrive at a Maroon-run lodge. Several are owned and staffed by the villages themselves, which is the kind to choose.
• Evening — The river at dusk. There is no road, no phone signal, and the generator goes off.

Where to stay upriver (three nights)

• Simple: the river lodges between Atjoni and Djumu — thatch, hammocks or basic rooms, full board because there is nowhere else.

Day 4 — The Maroon villages

• Morning — A village visit with someone from it. The Saamaka and Matawai peoples here descend from those who escaped the plantations and fought the Dutch to the 1760s treaties that recognised their autonomy — a century before slavery was abolished in the colony.
• The woodcarving is the visible tradition: doors, stools and paddles cut in interlocking geometric patterns, each with meaning.
• Ask before photographing, always, and expect a village fee, which is right.
• Afternoon — Swim in the river where they tell you it is safe, or walk into the forest with a guide.

Day 5 — The river, and the rapids

• A day on the water. The Gran Dan and Awarradam rapids, granite shelves the river pours over, with pools between them you can sit in.
• Or the forest — the walks from the lodges are good for howler monkeys, toucans, and the sheer scale of what is essentially undisturbed Amazon.
• Suriname is over ninety per cent forested, the highest proportion of any country on earth, and most of it has never been logged.

Day 6 — Back down, and Brownsberg

• Morning — Downriver and back towards the coast.
• Afternoon — Brownsberg Nature Park, on a plateau above the Brokopondo reservoir — a lake created by a dam in the 1960s which flooded 1,500 square kilometres and displaced several thousand Maroons, whose drowned forest still stands out of the water as dead trunks.
• The park has waterfalls, eight monkey species and a view over the reservoir that explains the whole thing.

Day 7 — Galibi and the turtles

• Morning — East to Albina on the Marowijne, then by boat to Galibi Nature Reserve, near the French Guianese border.
• Galibi is one of the world’s most important nesting beaches for leatherback turtles — animals up to two metres long and several hundred kilos, hauling up the sand at night to dig.
• Season runs roughly February to August, peaking around April to June. Green and olive ridley turtles also nest here.
• It is run with the Kalina and Lokono communities who live alongside it, and they guide the beach walks.
• The rules: no white light, no flash, stay behind the animal, and do what the guide says.
• Stay the night in the village; the beach is a night activity.

Day 8 — Back, and fly out

• Morning — Boat and road back to Paramaribo, most of the day.
• If your flight is the same evening, leave very generous margin. Better to come back the day before.