Minibus to .. Suriname

[ In September 2003, I took a minibus to Paramaribo. I wrote this and I keep fantasising of taking a minibus to ... different parts of Guyana - trying to write about our own travel here ]

Georgetown to Suriname - overland
Bobby, the bus driver calls at 3am, they coming in 15
minutes or so, then they reach about 6am and we start
off. people snoring in the bus, reach rosignol, one
must have fish and bread. cross the river in the
morning, have this book i am reading which i did not
know was funny, so i was laughing and people watching
me funny. one nice lady asked me to share the joke
with her. so i stopped reading.

we reached moleson creek, and wait two hours for the
famous ferry,
humidity high, and only flocks of birds moving. ferry
eventually
arrives.

takes awhile for customs and immigration.

soldier on
the ferry says how
stupid life is, we inherit these crazy border
structures from english
and dutch, and we descendants of colonised people
fight over things which the
original people no longer fight over.
hope his bosses dont hear him talk like that.
most people say go by back track, it is faster. the
drive to nickerie, sunday afternoon, people just
quiet. place is green, road is baddish at the
beginning. saw hindu temple, mosque, church, people
selling stuff, people sitting down, just liming like
in guyana.
reach paramaribo in the night, can't find the hotel at
number 20 where i am supposed to be (found on the
internet). stop at a place with no lights, and  call,
and a man says he does not now the number. someone
inside says that the building is the number and comes
down to open the gate, tells me to be careful with the
steps. the room door has no key ,
two single beds, nothing else, nice open windows lots
of breeze, 10 USD
a night. the man who does not the number where he
lives is Bernard , Guyanese,  , he is a
programmer, he has a computer in the room, glad to
show off what he is
doing, offers me hot water and coffee and so on. after
discussing the merits of C++ and java and so on, i go
off to sleep , wake
up
when the door opens and i collect keys from maja, i
don't bother to
close the door,

paramaribo is nice, small, dutch buildings , beautiful
mosque and synagogue close by. I sit at the side of
the river. i forgot my pouch in the bus, and after
going back for it, I discover  someone took the money,

so i decided to come back home. spent the rest of the
guilders on sno
cones, cake, and using the jacuzzi at the hotel
krasnapolsky - Paramaribo's poshest.
the drive back from paramaribo, mist rising over rice
fields, again
beautiful through sleepy eyes. bus is nice and full,
people, then their
bags all around lady next to me is coming from
cayenne. she is a trader,
trilingual.ferry back takes long as well, humidity
high. Meet Rafael, German who is biologist studying
frogs in Guyana. yep, he spent nine months in an
abandoned
forest station... all kinds of people. There was
another older /German
couple who were traversing the Guianas by jeep. and a
guyanese
surinamese,
speaks English with all the creolese accent, coming
back to meet
grandparents for first time.
manage to stretch for a bit on the bus, want to go
back to finish off
sitting in the old dutch quarter of paramaribo, and
near the river and
watch the world go by.