Suriname

Paramaribo — the capital, with a UNESCO World Heritage historic city centre of 17th–18th century Dutch colonial wooden architecture (unique in the Americas — the entire city centre is built of painted wood, not stone), the Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral (1885, the largest wooden church in the Western Hemisphere), and the Hindu temples, mosques and synagogue within 500m of each other — a living demonstration of Suriname’s extraordinary multiculturalism.

💡 Suriname is the only country in the Americas with Dutch as the official language (apart from the Netherlands Antilles). Its population is a unique mix: Hindustanis (Indian indentured labourers, 27%), Maroons (descendants of escaped African slaves who established free communities in the interior, 22%), Creoles (21%), Javanese (Indonesian indentured labourers, 14%), Chinese, Indigenous Amerindians and Dutch settlers. No single group is a majority.

The Centrale Markt (the most ethnically diverse market in South America — Javanese noodle stalls, Hindustani roti shops, Maroon wood carvings, Chinese grocery stores and Dutch bakeries all within 200m) and the Stichting Volkslectuur Suriname — the museum of Surinamese folk art with the finest collection of Maroon woodcarving and textile art outside the Smithsonian.

💡 The Maroons of Suriname are descendants of West African slaves who escaped Dutch plantations in the 17th and 18th centuries and established independent communities in the interior jungle — the largest free Black communities in the Americas at the time. They signed peace treaties with the Dutch colonial government in 1762 (the Ndyuka) and 1762–1767 (the Saramaka), preserving their independence. Their woodcarving and textile traditions are among the most sophisticated in the Americas.

90km from Paramaribo. Brownsberg Nature Reserve (8,400 hectares on a 450m plateau above the Brokopondo Reservoir, the largest artificial lake in the Americas by area) — howler monkeys, 8 primate species, 450+ bird species and the plateau edge viewpoint over the lake (a flooded landscape of dead tree stumps stretching to the horizon).

💡 The Brokopondo Reservoir (created by the 1964 Afobaka Dam, flooding 1,500km² of forest and displacing 6,000 Saramaka Maroons) is the largest artificial lake in the Americas by surface area. The submerged trees are still standing after 60 years — the lake is called the “sea of death” locally. The reservoir provides 40% of Suriname’s electricity.

5h boat from Atjoni via the Suriname River. The Central Suriname Nature Reserve (UNESCO World Heritage Site, 1.6 million hectares of pristine equatorial rainforest — 5,000+ plant species, 680+ bird species, giant river otters, jaguars — one of the largest protected areas in South America with no roads and no resident population).

💡 The Central Suriname Nature Reserve was inscribed by UNESCO in 2000 as one of the world’s greatest remaining intact tropical ecosystems —1.6 million hectares with no logging, no agriculture and no roads, accessible only by river. It contains the source headwaters of four major Surinamese rivers and is home to species still being discovered by science.

A full day in the reserve — canopy tower birding at dawn (harpy eagles, giant anteaters, peccaries and the extraordinary biodiversity of undisturbed Amazonian forest), a dugout canoe exploration of the forest rivers and a night walk (red-eyed tree frogs, caiman, tapir tracks and the nocturnal forest entirely transformed by torchlight).

💡 The harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja — the largest and most powerful eagle in the Americas, with talons the size of a grizzly bear’s claws, capable of carrying prey up to 7kg) is the apex aerial predator of the South American rainforest and is reliably found in the Central Suriname Nature Reserve. It nests in the forest canopy and hunts sloths and monkeys.

3h from Paramaribo by boat. The Marowijne River (the border with French Guiana) — Maroon communities of the Ndyuka and Saramaka people in villages accessible only by river, where the men practice the most sophisticated woodcarving tradition in the Americas (geometric abstract motifs in hardwood, carved with machetes and chisels).

💡 The Ndyuka Maroon woodcarving tradition produces objects of extraordinary geometric complexity — chairs, paddles, combs, trays and ritual objects covered in interlocking diamond, spiral and chevron patterns, each design unique to the carver’s family lineage. The tradition has been maintained in the jungle since the 17th century with no contact with West African sources; it represents an entirely New World development.

3h30 from Paramaribo by boat. Galibi Nature Reserve (the Atlantic coast of Suriname, where leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) nest March–August in the largest Atlantic nesting population on the continent) — one of the most important leatherback nesting sites in the world, with up to 30 nests per night at peak. Fly from Johan Adolf Pengel (PBM).

💡 The Surinamese Atlantic coast (Galibi and Matapica) hosts one of the three largest leatherback turtle nesting populations in the world, alongside Trinidad’s Grand Riviere and French Guiana’s Awala-Yalimapo. Leatherbacks travel from Suriname to Arctic feeding grounds — a round trip of 12,000km — before returning to the same beach to nest.