I beg the indulgence of anyone bored enough to read this missive, it is unedited and in progress, with one-finger typing and very little knowledge about the internet. More photos and text will appear as ready.

Christmas morning arrived, along with Chippie in her bathrobe and Priscilla in PJ 's with Bloody Marys in hand, to make sure I would leave. I had an inflatable boat and a heap of electronic gizmos to get to and through Newark airport, on to Trinidad and then Paramaribo. It was probably unreasonable to expect this to be a flawless exercise, and unsurprisingly, I had a spot of trouble. I was informed that nothing overweight could fly with Continental in the month of December, so the boat would have to follow me at some indeterminate date in the future if Newark's baggage handlers didn?t feel like lifting something a little heavy that day. I was also not allowed to pay for my slightly overweight bag with anything other than a credit card, although I waved the brick of cash from my pocket at my tormentors. Eventually they relented, and I felt sorry for the fellow who took the evil green paper.

So I flew to Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, now committed to fully seeing through the second mistake I had made. I was stuffed into the rear left corner of the plane, the very rear corner, and my humor wasn't the greatest. It would be less improved by the fact that two planeloads of visitors disgorged their human hordes at about the same time, and those of us unfortunate enough to be non -Trinis? were processed by a single gormless official who was blissfully uncaring of the wait we were subjected to, around two and a half hours. I understood why there had to be plate glass between this, and probably all Trinidadian officialdom, and the people they served; it took all I had not to curse the SOB out before removing his bespectacled head from his neck. I already knew I would never visit this island again.

Funnily enough, the boat wasn't on the plane.

I took a taxicab into POS for a sum that would have cleared the national debt of a small country and checked into the Hilton, where I dined on the only possible fare at that hour, shrimp cocktail, frustration and beer. I woke up early and contemplated the view from my little porch with a couple of cigarettes. The air was damp and pleasant after New York's winter, and I saw some of the birds that had become familiar on my first visit to South America two years earlier. I never recorded what I ate for breakfast, save for the fact that the continuous toaster was buggered and the bread had to be moved along by inserting a metal tool and hooking the mechanism, making sure not to touch the elements.

I took a stroll to the Botanical gardens, passing the Presidential Palace (one hundred windows and a new roof) as I had the whole day to kill before catching the evening flight to Paramaribo. The Gardens were underwhelming, and not heavily visited, but I enjoyed seeing and filming the birds. It seemed to be a pity that in this tropical zone there had been so little effort to create the spectacular tumble of vegetation that was possible. The Presidents garden next door had much more color.

Back at the hotel, a fun girl of Indian descent called Dana set me up with a side trip to Caroni swamp on my way to the airport as I checked out. An older man by the name of Amar duly arrived and ferried me along the winding crest road that skirted the guts of Port-of-Spain and down to the airport road. We stopped by a canal and waited for the tour operator to arrive. Amar wasn't having me do any of my own negotiating, but I didn't mind being taken for a bit of a ride while he stayed with my luggage in the car. To my mounting horror, the boat began to fill up with all sorts of tourists, locals as well as those damned foreigners. I was beginning to lose count of the number of mistakes I had made so far, and I had only been away from home for one day. Eventually the boat set off and chugged along the canal for a while, the guide/ driver stopping here and there to point out some snakes and a torpid little anteater balled up in the overhanging mangroves. After wandering along for about 40 minutes, we came to a spot of open water and stopped to wait for the Scarlet Ibis to arrive. I eagerly set up the new video camera only to realize that the idiot sitting immediately behind me, with an inflated sense of his own humor, was going to make loud and banal comments for the entire boat to hear and mess up any recordings I might get. He was itching to be tossed overboard. Anyway, I tried to remain calm, it was the National Chicken we were waiting for. In time, groups of the birds flew in and settled down to roost in a mangrove hammock, brilliant red as they caught the low sun. But I was happy to leave the swamp and make for the airport.

You can imagine my glee when I arrived at the airport to discover that the boat hadn't arrived and the flight to Paramaribo was cancelled due to some strike or other. I rescheduled for the next possible flight, in two days. It crossed my mind that I might never slip the lackadaisical bonds of this island. A jolly fellow by the name of Mr. Boodhoo consented to drive me to a guesthouse, Par-May-La's Inn for the familiar princely sum. What I saved by avoiding the Hilton would no doubt be more than spent on the all too frequent visits I would be making to the airport. The Inn was much closer to the pit of the Port, and therefore quite cheap. In fact, a night's stay here cost a little more than half the cab fare to the airport. Gita, the receptionist sold me a few cold Caribs, and I began to decompress with the aid of several beers and some KFC chicken and grease. It took beer, BBC and a couple of hours of reading to put me to sleep.

In an effort to use my imprisonment constructively, I called Mr. Boodhoo and arranged to be driven to the Asa Wright Nature Center, another place of pride for the Trinis. He arrived and I discovered that he had a pathological fear of dust, so when I tried to open the windows he protested strongly, and it was only after some time into the death defying drive that he allowed me to open the windows so that I didn't have to film through the windshield. We climbed up into the mountains and the road narrowed, becoming barely passable from the potholes and washouts as we went along, and it really wasn't funny when a car hurtled at us from the opposing direction. We passed steep hillsides that were trellised for the cultivation of Christophine (Chayote, according to Wikipedia), a kind of fruit that was grown rather like Kiwifruit, but I couldn't really discover how it was cooked or what it tasted like, just that it was expensive and interchangeable with cucumber.

We reached the Center, which was a little piece of Paradise at the end of a nasty drive. The house was old and overlooked a beautiful valley, surrounded by mountains and covered with jungle. Closer to the building grew the first cacao plants I had seen, and flowering plants deliberately grown for their appeal to the hummingbirds that were flitting around us. A large verandah provided the viewing area for the bird feeders just below, and large lizards and Agouti, one of the largest rats around, scrounged morsels of fruit and bread dislodged by the Honeyeaters, Tanagers and Oropendolas. The visitors were mostly serious bird lovers with good binoculars, cameras and video equipment, and very respectful of the birdlife. I was pleased to get a bunch of great photos and footage of the participants of the banquet below the porch before indulging in rum punch and a sandwich.

I took a short tour after lunch, it wasn't permitted to wander around alone, but got to watch White-chinned Mannakins at their lek, and record the unearthly sounds of Bearded Bellbirds in the trees above the trail. They were loud enough to drown out the sounds of small children and their shushing parents.

Audio clip, about 25 seconds, of Manakins, with Bellbirds in the background. Other birds in this slide show are Honeyeaters and a Bananaquit, just to take up some space.

We returned to town and I was deposited at the Inn. I strolled down to the corner store where the Chinese girls working at the register were wearing rather optimistic T shirts with "I'm so sexy" printed across the chest, and they eyed me strangely when I approached clutching my beers. Perhaps tall men with grey hair were a rarity.

The television told me that Mrs. Bhutto had been murdered today.

I sat on the porch drinking my beer and reviewing the recordings I had made, while Gita made a valiant attempt to track down my luggage. We sat together after a bit and I extracted as much of her personal information as I could which was very amusing. She was married at sixteen, her husband went off to Canada when her daughter was six months old, and never came back. Her present boyfriend was dumb as rocks by her account, and she couldn't really account for why they were together. We sat laughing until a group of Venezuelans arrived to enquire about the room rates. It seemed that staying here would be too costly so one of the fellows left to find cheaper accommodations. The group spent a couple of hours hanging around until one of the women started to feel unwell, and she came into the lobby to sit and was fanned by a couple of others. Her condition deteriorated and when it was clearly serious they had wanted to go to the hospital, which was just a few blocks away, but the decision was made to call an ambulance. After about fifteen minutes I checked on the woman who was by this time lying on the floor on some pillows. She was clearly dead, I could find no trace of a pulse. The ambulance screeched in after twenty-five minutes, followed closely by a second. It probably wouldn't be wise to have a heart condition and live further than walking distance from the hospital in Trinidad. I strolled a few blocks to a steak joint for dinner, which was next door to a club. I munched on flying fish with too many chips and not enough coleslaw, while watching the teenage girls being disgorged from cars at the curbside and get wanded for weaponry as they entered the club.

In the morning I walked down to the Caribbean Airlines and Continental offices, but discovered that in this age of computerization the presence of my luggage couldn't be determined from town. I was pleased to be told that the flight out that night would be two hours earlier than I had expected, so I scuttled back to the Inn and packed. Mr. Boodhoo, the dustphobe, drove me to the airport by way of the zoo, which wasn't a very inspiring stop. It was interesting to see the capybara, but sad to watch the group of howler monkeys roaring into the faces of dumb-looking voyeurs through the wire mesh.

To my amazement the boat had arrived, and I had to take the beast to Cargo as it wouldn't be taken as luggage for reasons that I couldn't understand. The clerk assured me that it would be on the same plane I would be sitting in, so I returned to the main terminal and watched tv while swigging a beer before I checked in. It was a noisy joint, but the news was all about a man who had fallen out of a coconut tree and departed this island; I felt that he was lucky.

The flight to Paramaribo was uneventful and comfortable, Immigration and Customs was a breeze, and Winston was nowhere to be seen. I waited a bit and then took a taxi for the drive into Paramaribo. The only place I knew was the hotel where I had stayed on the last visit, so I thought that if Winston was MIA I could get a room there. But he did show up, not having received my email that the plane would be arriving early and took me to a cousin's apartment at the family farm complex. After dumping my luggage we drove into town and had a couple of Black Cat Rums, a favorite from the last visit, at Zanzi-Bar, Winston's hangout du jour.

In the morning I met Diana Gummels, my landlady, who would turn out to be a relaxed and gracious host. Her two sons were busy setting off fireworks as soon as it was apparent that all the lodgers were awake, so recording anything down on the farm was going to be a bit tricky. Winston drove me around town for a while, it was great to see familiar sights. We dropped by Pieter Sonneveld's house to deliver some odds and ends from the US that I had lugged in, and began to sip on some rum. Pieter was our extremely tolerant guide for the first Suriname trip in 2oo6. Pieter's wife Nancy brought their infant daughter Jessie onto the porch, and Pieter began to muse about taking her paddling as soon as she could walk. After a while a white bus showed up and a load of men in bright yellow shirts began to troop up the stairs. I had met a few of these characters on my last visit to Suriname, though not as brightly clad but with the familiar container of intoxicants in hand. I was stripped of my shirt and made to wear the yellow beacon of impending debauchery, the rum began to flow and I was detailed to roll the video camera.

Pieter was walked inside and emerged in a monk's habit, doughnut wig, with a spectacularly dimensional dildo sewn into the robes. We clambered on the bus, which was equipped with cup holders and began a little tour of Paramaribo. The evening consisted of stopping in shops and malls, bars and restaurants, displaying the fake pecker and seeing what reactions came out. It was waved at passing traffic, girls on the street or in cars, slapped gratuitously against anything or anyone. I was amazed how everyone played along with this foolishness and got a good laugh, an edgy lawyer in the US would have had a field day turning this lighthearted nonsense into a civil rights violation. Along the way we would stop, harass and purchase sundry items. Most appealing for me was the blood sausage bought for next to nothing from a street cart, it went perfectly with beer. The video that resulted is very amusing if one can ignore the fact that only Dutch was spoken, and a full description of the evening is beyond the scope of this text, save to say that the last stop for me was in a bar with a superb-looking Brazilian bartender, who dealt with the unruly mob in a totally placid way. I hailed a cab and made my way back to the farm, relieved that for once I was using good sense.

30th December. I did a bit of filming in the central square, where a flowered Lachmon and robust Mr. Pengel eyed the goings-on in the Parliament across the lawn. Winston had located his office on the Waterkant, in a handsome old hotel with plenty of tourist foot traffic going by. Some clients stopped in and handed over a wad of cash for a tour they had booked, and once they had left Winston closed up. Flush with currency, he decided that it was time for a drink, something I really needed, so we drove the hundred yards to Fort Zeelandia and ate tapas with Erna, living in Suriname, and Monique who was visiting her lover for three weeks. Conversation was very funny, and became more ridiculous as the drinks flowed. Eventually we were kicked out and wandered over to the bar across the street where we met a couple of the revelers from the night before. Tom, aka the Belgian, though he was born in Suriname, and Pablo, who did environmental assessment for a mining company were not in such good shape. The evening had become rather full after my departure and the details were sketchy and probably unpublishable.

Too many more drinks, hunger and food that I couldn't even remember rounded off that day. We staggered off to the bus and Winston drove me home.

There seemed to be a tension in everyone on New Years Eve, probably the expectation of a rip roaring bender that night. The cell network wasn't handling the volume of calls, no doubt people trying to make arrangements to get blotto later on.

Winston arrived and we drove the bus down to the north end of the farm, looking at the birds moving around in every direction. I tested the sound equipment a little, and Winston crooned and wowed over the big lens that would become his on my departure. After a few minutes of Nature we ran into town for drinks which, once again, I really didn't need. In need of a few hours to myself in a somewhat sober condition, I tried to sleep but couldn't. A car drove up and Francesca, who would be my first traveling companion, emerged and introduced herself. She was pretty with dark hair and looked physically fit enough to be able to tolerate some rough water. Francesca lived in Curacao, but was born in Suriname where her parents still live.

Winston arrived to subject me to the annual Surinamese thrash that was New Years Eve. The first stop was his wife Annique's family home where the fireworks began in earnest, the cacophony was almost too much to bear, and the air was a toxic blue color. Winston's father Henk had the right idea, fly off to Arapahu Island in the Corantyne River and enjoy the sounds of nature for the duration. The road in front of the Torarica Hotel near the center of town was jammed with people. Several bands were playing so I couldn't really hear myself think, and so sought peace in several drinks. We spent most of the evening in a very loud and jolly Hindi bar that was packed with good-looking girls but conversation was pretty pointless. Most of the female revelers in the street were dressed in very revealing clothing which surprised me a little, India isn't famous for having a very liberal tradition within the castes that the Surinamese Hindis came from. But who was I to complain? Annique brought me home around 2am, and then wandered off to have fun with her girlfriends!

On New Year's Day Winston caught me as I was wandering down the road at the farm, off to do some soothing and restorative bird photography, and I was diverted to lunch at t'Vat, a popular hang out and scene of much of the previous evening's corruption. We ate Nasi with kip (chicken), which was quite palatable. Winston didn't notice the little red spot of fiery sauce, and scooped it into his mouth with a little rice. He started to splutter and turn red as the hot sauce scorched every nerve ending in his mouth. The good part was that we had reason to drink another beer or two.

Back at the farm I managed to complete the stroll that I had begun in the morning. The farm road had plenty of life to keep me amused, and every fence post that ran along one side of the old rice paddies had a pile of apple snail shells at its base. The Snail Kites who caused this phenomenon were quite approachable, but the Limpkins who also fed on the hapless mollusks were very skittish and I never managed to take a reasonable photo of these birds. A Pied Water Tyrant, or Ditch Whore as the locals called them, were busy constructing a nest in a drainage channel by the side of the road, in a spot that could allow some great filming. Lesser Kiskadees were also very busy nesting; Orange-winged Amazons were trying to drown out the noise of the fireworks that still seemed to be going off every few minutes. I came a cross a troop of squirrel monkeys and accidentally took some footage of a curious individual who happened to hang around longer than the rest of the bunch.

Back at the flat I showered and braced myself for the arrival of Winston, he was bringing Francesca along to discuss the various options for adventure that were open to us. After a while we wandered off to find a place to eat and have a few drinks, ending up at a bar along the Surinam River. Winston became very quiet, there was no food on offer but we could get a couple of drinks before returning home.

January 2nd. No doubt a day of work and industry for the entire population. Miriam would be my driver today for the investigative trip to the airport where there was the promise of a boat. Naturally, it wasn't there as Carribean Airlines had neglected to load any cargo on my flight. I was assured it would arrive on this evening's flight, and the cargo people would call Winston, whose number I duly supplied.

Miriam was an air traffic controller, and in part, the reason for my boat's non-arrival. She was on a limited strike, and would not work beyond midnight. For reasons known only to the higher powers, Caribbean Air only wanted to fly into Paramaribo after midnight, and turn around in the wee hours of the morning for the dreaded flight back to dreaded Trinidad, and so I was lucky just to get to Suriname as they had thought to pull the flight forward, unbeknown to the passengers, it should be noted. I found out purely by accident. Miriam would drive me, and wanted no more for her services than my paying for the gas. On the way home we drove through Republiek, and had a look at the pretty creek that runs through the area. Pieter, our guide for the first Suriname adventure, had mentioned that it was a good place to paddle a day before I left the country. I think Miriam was glad to have something to do during the hours she was idle before spending more idle hours in the tower directing one or two planes that ventured into the airspace before midnight. Conversational and animated, she was divorced from a not so nice husband with immotile sperm. Miriam herself was having a spot of trouble finding a monogamous Surinamese male to replace him. It was very humid, and felt like rain. I was planning on visiting a stretch of forest that ran west from the farm, but the promise of a cacophony of great nature sounds to record never materialized. I found Winston and we cruised town a little, ending our night at Zanzi-Bar with Erna and Monique once again.

I was up early on January 3rd, and wandered off to record and film. Later in the morning Francesca came to pick me up for a visit to the Hermitage Mall in search of batteries, blood sausage and a map. We only found the batteries. The butcher in the little shopping area right at the entrance to Gummels Farm had the blood sausage, delicious and spicy, it was best eaten on a roll with mayonnaise and perhaps, a few bits of chopped raw onion. Sometimes I have strange taste.

Lunch was at the Restaurant Sarinah, hotbed of culinary delights during the last visit, and the sweet and sour chicken was superb. While I tried not to lose my cool, Winston sat on the phone with Caribbean Airlines Cargo in Port of Spain and he was assured the boat would be on Friday's plane. "I don?t know what happened, but loading was delayed." Duh, but I suppose there was some hope. After a little snooze, I was dragged off again to Zanzi-Bar for drinks with Thom and Stijn, two Surinamese brothers who had Belgian parents and were thus known as the Belgians. We were regaled with stories of drug planes landing on the road leading to the west of the country, guided by burning pyres, and then being unable to take off again because the mules hadn't brought the right fuel to power a turbo prop. One fellow walked for three months through the jungle with a broken foot after the plane carrying him, a heap of cocaine and two pilots crashed, leaving him the only survivor. One of the brothers worked for a detergent company that was gleefully robbed by two men in Santa Claus outfits, who dispensed candy to all and sundry before delicately suggesting that the money be handed over while brandishing a couple of pistols. The plot next to the factory had been rented for many years to a shady dude who had left a number of drums of acetone hanging around, but after a new deal was struck to lease the land to the detergent makers, the drums were loaded onto some low trailers for incineration at the State oil company. During the night a couple of trucks drove up, attached themselves to the trailers and drove off, never to be seen again. Drug planes would land on sandbanks at the coast where metal mesh runways had been laid, and cigarette boats would float the cargo out to ships waiting in deeper waters. All of these stories were accompanied by much laughter, and I thought, a certain respect for the villains who undertook their nefarious activities with the great sense of humor characteristic of many of the people I had met in this country.

One of the Belgians worked for Staatoil, and I learned quite a bit about how the company was extracting oil from the swamps of coastal Saramacca province without devastating the environment. Instead of trenching and draining the swamp, the drilling rigs were floated over the muck on a cushion of air, and the well head wasn't sitting on its own little island at the end of the process. Stijn had designed and built the baffles that were used to separate the oil from salty water and sand. I thought that the brothers were very proud of how little damage the system was causing the environment. It was a fun evening, but I didn't sleep well. I needed to work some numbers so that I might have an idea of what I could achieve with the pretty limited resources I had.

In the morning Francesca and her father stopped by, I assume so that he would have an idea in whose hands he was placing his daughter's life. We would go and get some advice from Pieter later, who would also load tracks on my gps so that we might have an idea where we were in a few days. Pieter had come across a quote that reminded him of me, and he was delighted to let me in on it. The general thread was that if you didn't plan ahead you were unlikely to be disappointed by what happened. I'm sure this inspired a load of confidence in Francesca, and Dora Baer who would come on the second trip. I had learned during the first Suriname visit that trying to plan everything perfectly was boring and pretty pointless as one had to be adaptable to the vagaries of efficiency that Suriname was bound to lob your way. I had spent many sleepless nights and acquired an accelerating rate of graying hair trying to plan that trip.

I engaged the services of Harish, a driver from the last trip, who had now moved into planning birding trips to here and there, and we drove out to Weg-nar-Zee where I managed to take some great photos of a Black-collared Hawk and little else. We watched the sea receding over the mud banks as the tide dropped, and marveled at the amount of trash washed up on shore. Much of it was ghee containers, so it left little doubt in my mind that the culture of responsible waste disposal wasn't hot in the Indian community either. There were no Scarlet Ibis, which was the main reason we had come to this spot.

Death before Breakfast.

On Sunday 6th I got up early to join Miriam, Francesca and a couple of other girls for a Sunday drive along the coast road to Coronie Province and the town of Totness. The drive out was relatively pleasant, but the girls were chattering non-stop and I nearly bailed out on this mission before realizing that it would probably be better than any alternative that I might have thought of.

We stopped at a patch of forest to see if there were any sounds worth recording, but the chatter put paid to that idea although I did get to see and film a troop of Squirrel monkeys who weren't particularly fussed by our presence. A few miles further on, very near the town of Boskamp, we came across a truck stopped in the road by a large depression in the road. The driver was standing there and pointed to a car upside down in the swamp, with two distraught women clawing at the door handles. I removed my shirt and the contents of my pockets and got in the water to try and extract the unfortunate victims with little hope of finding anyone alive. The doors were firmly held shut by the mud, and the bodies trapped by dashboard and seatbelts. This was the second time I had handled a dead body within the span of ten days; I felt that this was either a pretty ominous development, or such a dose of mortality that I was now free from more experiences like this. Three was enough. This car had sped past us a little while before, bamboo fishing poles protruding from the rear windows. There were no skid marks at the accident site, so we concluded that the car had hit the dip and launched itself. Within a few minutes several cars arrived, and a rope/chain combination was attached to the far rear wheel and pulled with a truck to right the white sedan. Some of the gawkers who arrives snapped digital photos as the corpses were removed from the drenched vehicle, something we found tasteless especially as the hapless victims were the brother and sister of one of the survivors. Apparently the Suriname Post paid two to three hundred Suriname dollars for the first photos of a mishap like this.

To be continued..

As we pulled away, me smelling like a swamp, the police rolled up. We crossed the long bridge over the Coppename River, sluggish and very tidal at this point, in a somewhat contemplative mood. On the first trip to this little country I had taken a kayak trip into the ocean and down the coast for a couple of days with Lee, my long suffering travelling companion for that little jaunt. It wasn't the easiest thing I had ever done, mud and the risk of being swamped by the rolling waves for hours each afternoon we were out. Our set off point was from this bridge.

We arrived at Miriam's father's house, his name was John, and also met a heap of cousins. Most spoke pretty good English and while my clothes were being washed and dried to remove the swamp smell, we ate breakfast of sardines, vinegar, habaneras, garlic and onions on toast. Who would have thought such a pungent combination could wash away the aftertaste of recent mortality. In borrowed clothing we went off to order lunch and explore a little.

There wasn't much remarkable about the town of Totness, but we drove to the coast down a canal road, the tide was very low and we watched some fishing boats struggling in the wind and mud to bring in the catch. The birdlife was great, Scarlet Ibis and a bunch of herons and shorebirds were out on the Mud of the Coppename Bank feeding away frantically in preparation for the long flight north. The larger shorebirds were Whimbrels, Marbled Godwits and Willets, while the smaller denizens of the mud were Semipalmated Sandpipers and others I wasn't skilled enough to identify. I managed to film Ibis flying more or less directly overhead, it was generally a very satisfying scene.

We ate the lunch that was ordered, which was delicious. The "restaurant" was a tent like structure built off the kitchen of the house of our host. The seating area was serenaded by a small singing seedeater in a bleak little cage, and a parrot. Cattle walked along a path next to the restaurant, and on the porch of the next door house a girl, practically topless, was having her hair done next to sundry defunct household items, a motorcycle and a hanging caiman skin. We returned to Paramaribo, I was dropped off, quite tired. Tomorrow would be a hard day.

Monday 7th rolled in with a dose of bulldust from Cargo in Trinidad. The plane apparently took off earlier than was expected due to the air traffic controller strike, and the Cargo department didn't have the foresight to get my boat to the plane in anticipation of its arrival. I suppose that is understandable. I went with Francesca to town in search of a little beer to wash away the frustration, and met Winston at Fort Zeelandia, which seemed to be closed that day. We ambled past a nearby building towards t'Vat, which was always open. The grounds of this spot were quite pretty so we took some photos until a friendly fellow came out of the building and informed us that we were strolling past the President's office, which wasn't that cool in the eyes of Officialdom, and he gently escorted us to the road on the route we would have taken anyway. He was very friendly, and was amazed that one of the AK toting guards hadn't stopped us earlier.

I'm not sure why, but at this point I resolved to get a cell phone for the duration of my stay in Suriname. I have never felt the need to own one, but there seemed little choice but to cave to the pressure here, I would have to learn to use it.

We had a couple of drinks in a gazebo/bar/ massage parlour/ shop in the ground of the Torarica hotel, on the bank of the Suriname River, very pleasant until the terrible piped music began, and we decamped.

Arapahu Island

Tuesday. Winston had offered us a few days at his little resort at Arapahu Island, in the Corantijn River which forms the border with Guyana, so Francesca and I collected a few things and headed to Zorg-en-Hoop to meet the plane. Since there seemed little likelihood that the boat would arrive, we accepted gratefully, this would give us a bit of reprieve from the frustration and consequent alcohol consumption which probably wasn't too good for one's general health.

The flight was uneventful, but I saw some familiar landmarks such as the braided section of the Coppename river near Raleigh Falls, and several large granite domes that protruded upwards through the tangle of green below us. Sporadic patches of rain told us we wouldn't have glorious tropical sunshine all the time, but it didn't look as though we would be in for any real drenching. The Cessna Caravan landed at Amotopo airstrip, dropped us and the departing group embarked, seemingly happy with their few days stay at Arapahu.

We met Felix, a Bush Negro who preferred to be called Mr. Spears, and Manny, an Amerindian who seemed to be taking orders. As I understood it, Mr. Spears was the cook and guide for tourists visiting and Manny piloted the dugout and did all the menial work. Manny could speak a little English due to the free movement of Amerindians between Suriname and Guyana, but it was up to Francesca to work out Felix's, sorry, Mr. Spears' rapid babbling. It was pleasant to be headed up the Corantijn by dugout again, Cocoi Herons, parrots and macaws flying to and fro across the river. As we approached Arapahu we say a troop of Red Howler monkeys in on of the big trees.. it would be more accurate to sat that Manny spotted the distant red balls about two minutes before I could even work out where they were.

We took the cabin that looked over the dock area, where Lee and I had stayed on out first visit. We strolled up to the falls, looking at the birds and an agouti along the trail. I filmed the fast flowing water from various vantages before we took a refreshing swim in a pool with fast flowing water tumbling over the rocks at its edges.

On our return to the Lodge we found that Felix was busy putting paid to the plan we had of floating down the river for a few miles without power, then back up with the motor, or being able to drink any rum, or going fishing. Manny was up for everything, but from Mr. Spears came a resounding "no" to anything we had wanted to do. He spoke rapidly, and in an insidiously friendly way so that one had to forcefully say, "Why not?" or he would simply run over you. I suspected that Felix wanted to be in charge while facilitating as little of a good time as possible, while Manny was all for anything interesting people wanted to do; this may be a bit harsh, because he did mellow a bit when it became obvious we weren't prepared to be overridden.

Dinner was blood sausage, potato salad, and a tuna and veggie concoction that Francesca put together.

On the 9th, I woke around 4 and sat on the little deck of the chalet listening to the sounds of the water and the night. No doubt there were a couple of cigarettes and some contemplation involved too, these early hours in Paradise had a tendency to set the brain in various interesting trains of thought that didn't seem to happen in upstate New York. Breakfast involved blood sausage and potato salad again, more a function of shelf life than the ideal healthy choice to start the day.

The schedule for today was that Manny would use a thimbleful of gas and take us across the river in the dugout, where he would leave us at the trailhead and return three hours later and bring us back again. So Felix was bleating and moaning like a hard-done by piglet because Manny had so much to do, (which was actually weed whacking the whole area of the grounds), and the several minutes this operation would take were just too precious. Manny had understood that he was to come and guide us, and it took several minutes to explain, much to his disappointment, that we wanted to go alone. So we were duly discharged on the far bank and would our way along the trail, which climbed up onto a ridge and down several little hollows with seasonal waterways draining into the Corantijn close by.

We came across some spider monkeys, the head honcho of this little group being a little irked by the presence of two sweating pale apes, so showed his disapproval by shaking the branches and vocalizing in a not so friendly way. There were birds all over the place, a woodpecker announcing to all the centre of his territory by hammering on a resonant log, Screaming Pihas (ubiquitous vocalists of Neotropical jungles) didn't seem to care that there was strange person with a long and fluffy microphone pointed at their underparts. We encountered various frogs and snakes, dutifully filmed them and when I showed one bit of serpent footage to Manny later he knew the little fellow all too well, having been bitten and left unable to walk or function at much of anything until he had been given a whole lot of medicine, including an injection. It should be mentioned here that Manny came from an Amerindian settlement, quite large, called Kwamalasamutu, a couple of hundred miles up the Corantijn, and Coeroeni rivers respectively, and he spent much of his time there, working for Winston for just as long as he could handle it before heading back home. Kwamala, as it is known, has a mission station and clinic.

After about two hours we returned towards the trailhead, and found Manny patiently sitting on a fallen log. He said he could hear us from quite a distance, and I thought we were very successfully creeping around so as not to disturb the wildlife. We shared a cigarette, I hadn't known Manny smoked, and he shared some of his knowledge of the surrounding forest. He scraped off some bark from one particular tree and squeezed the pulp to produce a blood red juice that was supposed to be excellent for cuts and abrasions. It was sad that he couldn't have come with us, I was keen to learn from him but didn't want to cause any grief between him and the wonderful Mr. Spears. In stead, this grass clipping be-splattered fountain of rare and empirical knowledge was reduced to being our water taxi driver. Back at the island, Manny went straight back to work while we relaxed and ate a meal.

At a little after 5 we got in the dugout to try a spot of fishing. We headed down a few hundred yards and turned into the first inlet on the left, now known as Anjoemara Creek.. named after the delicious and ugly little fish we were hoping to hook there. This creek formed an edge of the island, and we pushed a few Capped Herons in front of us as we motored upstream. We came to a stop, familiar from my last visit here (we met up with some electric eels and a whole lot of booze at this spot two years previously) and Manny set about catching bait that we would need while Francesca and I took photos of the water and rocks, and took a swim that we didn't deserve at all. The bait procurement system was rather complicated and involved Manny cracking open some large seeds that I think came from a tree, in many cases there was a fat white grub inside, this was used to bait a hook that would catch a Moroko or small piranha, which was then chopped into bite sized morsels to bait the hefty hook needed to catch the Anjoemara (common name: Giant Trahira).

My first cast yielded me a rock, and after the hook was freed rather ingeniously by Manny with a long stick (this pool was crawling with toothsome Anjoemara, so swimming in it wasn?t advisable- not to mention the eels) but I hooked a big and frisky bastard on my second cast.

Francesca, after a few crude and no doubt unprofessional casting lessons, fished away for a while without result. I suggested she move a few yards to the left for no particular reason except that fishing is not an exact science, and she hooked one. Manny was somewhat embarrassed as he had threaded a stick thought the gills of my little guppy, but it managed to break the branch and slither into the water, living to see another piranha baited hook another day. Home to beer, shower and bed.

We rose early, coffee and bread for breakfast (I am more used to toast, but when in Rome...) and loaded ourselves and baggage into the dugout for the ride down to Amotopo airstrip. Manny showed us a macaw nest on the east bank, with both parents in attendance. I had become very fond of Manny, and he seemed to have taken a liking for me too. We would see eachother at the end of the first river trip, if the boat ever arrived from Trinidad. At the airstrip, the plane had already landed with Winston and his group of clients. Winston's brother Scott, who looked like a kid that should be playing T-ball instead of someone ferrying tourists over the jungle, would be our pilot. So Scott informed me that the plane would make a stop at Pusugrunu, site of a less than awesome experience for me a couple of years back, to pick up some Aid workers. He thought it might be amusing when we were in the air, to have me say something on the radio for the benefit of all the pilots and those monitoring the radio frequencies. So as an American, even though I am saddled with a Southern African accent, I was to say something like: "US Recon 44, Point Acari to [Point Something in Fr. Guiana] 16000 feet". This would make everyone think that there was an illegal US overflight of Surinamese territory and the buzz around the water cooler would have Scott in stitches for weeks to come. Anyway, I obliged in my best approximation of a redneck southern drawl, which I think might be passable, all the time imagining myself in a little jungle jail from which any emergence might have been as miraculous as Papillon's. He assured me that nobody would recognize my voice, but by now I am probably being seriously monitored by the fake spy division of the NSA, if there is such a thing.

At Pusugrunu I recognized some of the characters I had met on the first visit, the Radio man/hunter with his dog, and the insidiously smiling Government man. I said hello, but there wasn't enough time to get into more pleasantries before the plane took off. Scott, in a role more in keeping with his boyish looks, passed notes back and forth to the Dutch Aid worker, unsurprisingly, tall and blonde. They were old friends.

Friday 11th. In a stunning development, the boat arrived, and with surprisingly little hassle. The taxi driver I had found didn't hang around, he was a speed demon and the Surinam Airways cargo people and Customs were on the ball and didn't give me any of the grief I was expecting. Quite refreshed by this experience, I directed the maniac to Zorg-en-Hoop so that I could organize to redirect a Cessna from flying directly to Amotopo, inserting a stop at Coeroeni. I bought some fishing equipment and a few supplies in preparation for the next trip.

I had dinner that night with Pieter and Nancy at Chi Minh which was much fun, and the food beyond any Chinese I had eaten in the States. This was the real stuff..

The next morning I filmed some attractive bird whose nest I stumbled upon quite by accident, a cup of rootlets in the split of a tree by the roadside. They were Cinnamon Attilas, and I learned later that this species had never been recorded breeding this early in Suriname. I began to pack the food, life jackets and sundry gear that Pieter had lent me for the trip, there seemed to be little point in buying things like pots and utensils when they would be used for way shorter than their potential life span. In the evening I caught up with Pieter again to discuss last minute details and get a few hints about the river, he had been down the stretch we were planning on taking. Pieter's opinion was that it was an easy trip, and it may have been a bit negligent not to take a satellite phone, but I was confident we would get away with it if enough care was taken by all. Before falling asleep that night I watched an extraordinary movie which made little sense, Clive Owen was blowing away all comers with a spectacular arsenal of weaponry that never ran out of ammo, all while clutching a newborn infant. Probably not the work he would be most proud of in his resume.

Coeroeni River

I was up early the next morning, and Henk picked us up for the ride to the airport, which was very quiet. I saw Scott who told me that the pilots were all talking about the mythical US overflight, and of course we would have to do it again if he picked us up from Amotopo in the event that we survived this little paddle.

Scott flew us to the Coeroeni airstrip, not too much distance as the crow flies, from our end point. The inhabitants of the settlement next to the strip hadn't been warned of our arrival, but I had brought some offerings to placate any ill feelings they might have. I was told that a little ferocious booze, and some useful fishing equipment would make a good gesture. Money was a little pointless, it involved a long and expensive flight to spend it all.

to be continued..

Scott flew low over the Coeroeni river, banked and buzzed the strip, at much less than treetop level, to give the inhabitants of the settlement a few minutes warning of our impending arrival.

On landing our gear and boat were disgorged onto the grass, but we were directed to a structure with a corrugated tin roof and two sides where we met the various luminaries of the Tirio tribe who lives in this little settlement. The Kapitaine wasn't too pleased that we had arrived without warning, but seemed placated a little with the fishing equipment and booze. I could understand that it would have been better to have told them we were coming, perhaps there were necessities that we could have brought for them, the plane was hardly full, but as it was a rushed schedule with the Cessna being diverted by us, it hadn't allowed us much time for shopping for others.

I had to ask permission to film, and some of the inhabitants were fine with it but others emphatically not. Scott knew some of the tribal members, and he was joking and chatting with them as we wandered around the village. They were very friendly and seemed unbothered by our presence. One of the structures was a make shift church, so it was probable that these people had been drawn away from their traditional lifestyle. I didn't see anyone wearing anything other than modern clothing. The plane took off and Francesca and I wandered around the village a bit before carting our luggage to the river bank, which thankfully wasn't far. There was a tame Grey-winged Trumpeter strolling around and a couple of pinioned parrots crept around the buildings. A few dozen yards from the river was a structure where dugouts were being made, and Francesca managed to extract a bit of the methodology involved. The raised ends of the log were wrapped in banana leaves before the hollowed interior was burned and wedged open with planks hammered downwards in successively longer sections as one moved towards the center of the boat.

The boat assembled and packed in front of almost the entire village, we set off around 12.30pm, the river quite calm and flowing at a pace that made paddling a breeze. Francesca and I had to get used to each other and for the most part we were a good team in the boat. The air was quiet, the temperature a very pleasant very hot and so I busied myself in acquiring a first class sunburn. There wasn't too much else to do, the birds seemed to have gone quiet for the most part, and in general the paddle was pretty uneventful until we stumbled on a group of giant otters, one carrying a half-chewed fish in its mouth. We filmed and snapped photographs as the otters came close to investigate us, and thoroughly satisfied that we were quite boring, swam upstream and out of sight.

The water began to move a bit faster in places and we had to negotiate a few riffles which was a little practice for what we would encounter later on when things were going to get a little tricky. We passed a Black Skimmer resting on a sandbank, I hadn't expected to see this bird several hundred miles from the coast, but the evidence is on film. The bird obliged us by dipping its elongated lower mandible into the water as it passed. We stopped on a couple of islands, one with a colony of Yellow-rumped Caciques who warbled and sang for us, as well as an area of rapids suitable for swimming and taking a stroll into the jungle, which was dark and quiet apart from some insect noises that could be heard over the gentle noise of the river.

Towards late afternoon we entered a zone of moving water and found a suitable campsite. A sandy beach and some rocks to use for a table, and a group of trees large enough to sling the hammocks made this an ideal spot to stay the night. I tried to film a Violaceous Trogon who steadfastly refused to turn around and show his brilliant yellow undersides, and filmed a distant heron hunting off the rocks in the middle of the rapids without being able to determine the species.

A little fishing yielded a piranha of good size, which I decided to cook for dinner! This was going to be a new culinary event for Francesca, and it was quite tasty if a little bony for easy eating. Later on we shone the flashlight into the water off the beach and could see anjoemara patrolling the shallows, and a couple of small stingrays helped convince us that swimming right here wasn?t such a great idea.

It poured with rain, and I hadn't set up the hammocks correctly, so both of us got soaked to the bone. It was cold, and I gave up my jacket to Francesca, wet as it was, and survived from the warmth given off by my scarlet sunburned skin. We set off a little later than I had wanted the next morning, Monday 14th. There were all sorts of birds around, we stopped and I accidentally encountered a Collared Puffbird in the forest near the river. He was extremely reluctant to move, watching me placidly while raising and lowering the feathers on his head in an effort to convey I don't know what. Green ibis, hawks, nightjars, kingfishers and diurnal bats and a caiman on a log all posed for the cameras.

The river became active and divided by several islands, we chose one on the right bank and tied up the boat. Almost immediately we encountered a pair of Black Curassows who clucked and vocalized softly as I chased them around the island with video camera in hand, they had very little fear of us, as did the hawk who kept us company, and the profusion of little hummingbirds of various types. This was a beautiful spot, and as we found some old dead batteries and a piece of cloth, others had thought so too. A troop of squirrel monkeys entertained us by flying across a gap, from tree to tree.

I tried to catch a piranha for bait, and after one hard bite and general failure in the side channel, I moved over to the main river with little expectation of catching anything. As I jumped from rock to rock I saw a large fish barreling away upstream. I quickly cast ahead of it and hooked the unfortunate fish, a beautiful peacock bass. It was sad that we had to eat it, but I really didn't feel like anything from a can. There was plenty of meat, and the meal was delicious in spite of my limited culinary abilities. After dinner we watched the stars, Francesca dipped into a bottle of wine and I made short work of a can of litchis soaked in rum. Quite sozzled at the end of the evening!

Tuesday morning. We packed and I filmed several hummingbirds, (Crimson Topaz) displaying over the river in the morning light. We set off and soon arrived at the confluence of the Coeroeni and Corantijn rivers, there would be quite a bit of bigger water from now on.We encountered a noisy colony of Caciques on an island in the river. I have always found active nests in the presence of a hornet's nest.

The river was beautiful, and the rapids a lot of fun to negotiate. After a while, the water became sluggish for the most part. There were plenty of sounds to amuse us, and after a while we decided to take a break and stroll into the jungle along some animal trails. The forest was full of sound, and close by we could hear larger animals moving. On our return I was sitting in the boat waiting for Francesca to emerge, there were a school of fish swimming around and snapping up the purple flowers that fell into the water from a tree above me. A long and green lizard then plopped into the water, swam frantically to the bank before hanging on a rock and giving me an evil look. It puffed out a throat flap as I came close to film, but didn't show any fear. I felt sure I could have picked up the fellow and he would have bitten me rather than move.

to be continued..

We stopped for lunch on an island, snoozed a bit and tried to fish. An anaconda skeleton occupied part if it, but the danger was in the rocks. Francesca fell badly between two boulders, and I thought for a moment that a broken leg would really be a tricky thing to deal with, we were about a day away from Arapahu. Luckily, she was undamaged apart from a bruise which would probably turn a spectacular color in the next few days.

Our quiet paddle would end soon. We had been keeping to the right bank as much as possible to avoid getting lost in the braided river and finding ourselves on the Guyana side, where apparently the bored border soldiers occasionally like to have some fun at the expense of anyone passing too close by. We had been warned not to stray in their direction.

We negotiated several rapids, at least one warranted the use of lifejackets and a measure of care so as not to plant ourselves sideways, or even nose first, into a rock. For the most part we succeeded.

We came up to a large rapid, and moved ourselves to the right edge of the main flow and tied up to the nearest island we could find without committing ourselves to a rough ride without being ready. The water moved in a beautiful, purposeful laminar flow to a drop by a large rock, and a boiling mess of whitewater beyond it. I couldn't really see what was in store for us, our view being blocked by some protrusions on the right edge of the rapid. I tried to film with the zoom extended, and played the footage back to see if I could figure out how the hell to negotiate this one. It really wasn't any clearer, so we decided to tie everything down and take the rapid right down the middle.

All was fine as we approached, and I saw an ominous looking standing wave to the left after the drop; hopefully the boat could be steered enough for us to ease to the right of it. No such skill, the drop was fine but the boat decided to try and climb the standing wave, failed, and for a few seconds stood there before being sucked backwards into the rapid. I was tossed out and clung to the boat, still upright, which gained a burst of speed and shot down the rest of the rapid before spitting us out into a calmer body of water. Francesca and I had no helmets, which wasn't that smart in retrospect, but I didn?t make any contact with rocks and I hoped that Francesca was intact too.

We found each other, assured ourselves that we were okay, and clambered back into the flooded and wallowing boat. We pulled in the containers that were floating next to the boat, but tethered, and fished out as many of the water bottles as we could find, and luckily managed to retrieve the paddles It turned out that we had only lost one water bottle, and the towel that had cushioned Francesca's bikini'd backside from the rough covering of the SOAR boat's seat. As we bailed as much of the water as possible, I didn?t hold out much hope for my equipment, the water was practically up to the gunwales and I had everything in garbage bags. We had to paddle the sluggish boat a mile or so before we could find a rocky area to empty everything and turn the boat upside down. We negotiated some little rapids before finding a rock to stop for the night a few hundred yards further down. We were exhausted and made ourselves a couple of stiff drinks, which we enjoyed on the warm rock. I set up the wet hammocks, but we decided to sleep on the sloping rock for as long as we could. There was no energy left to prepare a meal, and we didn't bother. I don't know how much I drank but it wouldn't have taken too much to be effective.

I slept for as long as I could on the rock, and then entered my hammock where I suppose I must have dozed until sometime before sunrise when the birds started to vocalize.

About one and a half minute of footage, the last few rapids we encountered. The first one was the water that turfed us out, and the last is the point of no return above the falls at Arapahu Island.

Wednesday 16th.

We were moving before sunrise, coffee and something to eat being a little more urgent than sleep. Francesca beckoned me to look downstream, which I did and saw a duo of tapirs quietly emerging from the river a dozen yards or so beyond her. They didn't seem to even notice us, and ambled quietly into the trees, with me scuttling around to try and film them in the low light as they emerged on the other side, but I couldn't anticipate them and only heard their footfalls.

We drank our coffee and watched the kingfishers and parrots attending to their early morning rituals, while macaws began to slowly fly back and forth across the river.

We set off and gingerly took the rapid next to our camp, it would be easy going from here: the gps told us that Arapahu was just a few miles away. We eased through another series of rapids, keeping to the right bank as much as possible, until we could hear the roar of King Frederik Willem IV Falls. We had to approach cautiously on the extreme right, and about twenty yards from the point of no return, ease into a creek. If we had missed it and couldn't make it to the bank we would have been rendered very dead by the raunchy tumble of water that was just ahead.

to be continued...

We found the creek and entered. The trail was right there, and we began to unpack the boat, ready for the really fun stuff.. lugging our equipment, and a seventy pound boat a mile or so on a narrow trail through the jungle. At moments like these I wished I had been more frugal in terms of what I really needed to take along on a paddle like this. It took several trips, and two and a half hours to get this accomplished. We carried the boat inflated, which wasn?t the best idea, but at least I didn't have to spend a whole lot of time pumping it up again for the trip across the river. We negotiated the water and found enough calm areas to meander our way across, and were met by a smiling Manny, who berated himself for not having seen us sooner so he could have picked us up on the other side in the dugout.

We spent a quiet afternoon in the open lodge, lazing and swallowing beer. Dinner was early, and involved heartburn from too much garlic and beer.

17th. Thursday.

After a slow dugout ride back to Amatopo airstrip, where we had tried to find the anaconda again, (no sign of it) and examining a Scarlet macaw's nest (both parents in residence) we flew back to P'arbo. The ATV wouldn't start, so there was much lugging of stuff again from the little dock to the airstrip. I think we didn't have the foresight to check and see if the kill switch was off or on.

Back at the flat I rested a bit in the afternoon and then wandered over to Pieter and Nancy's house a few blocks away. I needed to get the gps loaded with some fairly critical information, and try and get some advice. Winston arrived, and suddenly we found ourselves quite plastered. For this reason, since I wasn't nodding off I got to drive the bus all the way out to the airport to collect my traveler No. 2, Dora, who was arriving around midnight. All the passengers from the flight had left the building before we spotted Dora talking to someone in an office, it seemed that her luggage had gone astray, but at least she had her handbag, with some essential drugs for the trip, and a satellite phone. Who needs clean underwear anyway?

We drove back into town and deposited Dora at the Torarica hotel. Luckily, all the bars were closed, and Winston reluctantly dropped me at my flat on the farm, where I didn't manage to sleep well at all in spite of being generally pretty exhausted.

Central Suriname Nature Reserve

Friday 18th. to be continued...

I woke to buckets of rain. This was going to be a day of trying to figure out what kind of trip Dora and I would try to take in the wilds of Suriname. The original idea had been to spend a few days going down the Coeroeni river, but the delays with the boat had necessitated a change. It left us with the idea that we could be dumped in the middle of the Central Suriname Nature Reserve and paddle out to Raleighvallen, where there was a little resort and airstrip. But, we needed a helicopter for this operation, and there was some doubt as to the machine being operable as it was in need of some maintenance. The part in question had been removed and the owner was waiting for a technician to arrive to install the new component, but the techie was nowhere to be found. So the old part would be reinstalled and maybe it would work, much to the annoyance of the mechanic who had removed it.

I went into town to try and find Dora, write a few emails and try to work out the next steps. We lunched at Fort Zeelandia, carpaccio was my choice.. very good.

I'm not exactly sure how to account for the hours between lunch and dinner, but at the end of those lost hours, Winston, Francesca and I found ourselves at Chi Minh, an excellent Chinese restaurant. My notes tell me that we met some Americans at Zanzi-Bar later. They were a father and son team who had just come back from Tafelberg, a large flat topped mass in the center of Suriname where they had been trying to recapture a bat species that had been recorded there by the father years ago, before one coup or another had put paid to the research. The photographer sent out to document their activities by Outside magazine knew our man from the trip two years previously, but I doubt that he had as an outrageous time as had Bobby.

Saturday This was a day of preparation, shopping and general uncertainty as to where and when we could go. We weren't sure if the helicopter would be functional, or if the pilot would be up for flying us out the next day. Luckily, Dora was sport enough to make the best of whatever we might end up doing, but I was getting frustrated at not knowing what we would be doing. Dora had, on a whim and glass of wine, decided one evening to come with me when I was looking for a traveler. So she had taken ten days off from worthy banker's toil in New York city to come to a little country and cruise around the jungle with a bird painter.

Sunday 20th. I was up early, after just a few hours sleep, and began to pack. Nobody knew if the creek we had chosen, Tanjiemama Creek, would have high water in which case Pieter and Jerome, the pilot, would have tossed us and all the gear into the running water for us to deal with as we could, or if the sandbank that had been marked by gps would be exposed. So all the sensitive gear and spoilable food had to be pretty much waterproofed. God bless garbage bags.

Winston brought Dora to the flat, and Pieter arrived to drive us to Zorg en Hoop airfield to meet the helicopter. Pieter was going to come along for the ride, I think he wasn't going to miss seeing two Yanks leaping into a creek full of Anjoemara, piranha and sundry other joys like Candiru fish, and possibly never seeing us again.

The story of Candiru is quite interesting. They are a small member of the catfish family that are attracted by the smell of urea, something that leaks out of the gills of many larger fish in the river systems of Amazonia. They have a nasty reputation of trying, and sometimes succeed, to swim up the urine stream of homo sapiens letting fly in a river. I had resolved to try and capture one by urinating in a plastic bottle with a pinhole in the bottom, and trying to see if I could attract a specimen. The fish seem to prefer to hang out in shaded areas, and really only move if they can detect urea molecules in the water. For some reason or another I never got to actually try this capture method, but I also never pee'd in the rivers.

We weren't as heavy as everyone expected, so didn't have to edit out any of our gear which was a relief. The heli was loaded up and Dora and I embarked, sitting on some of out bags and clamped to the floor of the craft. This flying machine had done some work in its life, and I saw some strategic use of duct tape, which I forgot to point out to Dora before we took off. We almost didn't take off because the beast refused to start until a cart was wheeled up to give us a jump, the turbines were not yet ready to fire up so early on a Sunday morning. I had also forgotten to tell Dora that the helicopter would be taking off with the mechanical part that was at the end of its usable life. All of this was irrelevant anyway, Dora grinned for the duration of the flight.

After a little while the helicopter dropped below the cloud ceiling and we were whizzing over the jungle. I have to say that there are fewer more cool things than this, I saw hawks and macaws flying below us, and as we neared the drop zone I could see a macaw's (Scarlet or Red and Green, tough to tell) head sticking out of its nest hole in a huge Kapok tree.

We approached the landing zone and saw that the sandbar was exposed. All of a sudden we were dropping through the trees, leaves and twigs flying around us. The gap seemed impossibly small, but at least we weren't going in wet. We were unceremoniously dropped off, with a pitifully small number of bags and a blue barrel, and the helicopter was up and away through the trees. Then came the quiet, the jungle wasn't too noisy in the heat of the day.

We pumped up the boat, arranged the seats and loaded all the gear into the available space. We could see the fish swimming around in the water as we dragged the boat in, climbed into our seats, and began to paddle around the corner. We encountered the first of many many trees that had fallen across the creek, and for a while it seemed that we would be dragging the boat over or under fallen branches for miles rather than paddling it. But there were monkeys around us, two eagle species, Sunbitterns and trogons were some of the more interesting birds immediately in evidence, and the water was packed with fish. We wouldn't starve.

The boulder dam that presented itself in our path provided us with some interesting logistical problems. There was no way to paddle between the huge granite masses, so we had to remove the boat's contents, balance the bags and barrel on rock or flotsam, lift and maneuver the sixteen foot long boat up and between the boulders in stages with rushing water in the gaps, sometimes with feet and backside between two boulders, and passing the boat over. It wasn?t too much fun, and sadly I didn't have the foresight to photograph or film aspects of this little trial, we were too wrapped up in trying to solve the beautiful puzzle Nature had presented for our citified brains.

We made it through, and the creek was beautiful beyond the boulder dam. We stopped for lunch, liver pate sandwiches. One could buy small tins of liver pate in Paramaribo, prefect for two people, on bread with mayonnaise and raw chopped onions. Since we were some twelve feet apart in the boat, and both smelled of this heady combination, lunch wasn't a barrier to enjoying the company of my shipmate.

Later in the afternoon we spotted a sandbank and decided to camp for the night. We unloaded a bit, and drank rum and what was essentially, Kool Ade (de rigeur in the Guyanas, apparently) but made in Brazil. Quite satisfactory after a pretty strenuous afternoon. The next mission was to catch some dinner, and luckily for us the Anjoemara were on great form and seemed to be hanging out right where we had chosen to camp.

Fishing here was great fun. I was a little worried that the fish would mangle the small lures I had brought, as they were rushing them sometimes two fish at a time. I wielded the rod while Dora filmed and laughed in amazement at how fearless the fish were. I had to wade in to the depths of my family jewels when I got the lure stuck, but luckily they aren't that interesting. I hooked one, actually two fish were after the lure and one got itself foul hooked, it was a bit too big for our gastronomic needs, so we decided to carefully toss it back before trying for a smaller specimen. I caught another in short order, not long after having nearly impaled Dora while trying to take the lure away from a fish that was too big. This one was a better size, and after brutally nailing it in the head with the machete we got two perfect firm and white fillets out of it, which I cooked on the nasty gas stove I had with onions, garlic, habaneras (not enough), tomato paste and sundry ingredients I can?t remember at the moment. This concoction was consumed with rice and good conversation.

We had strung up the hammocks between several trees just up the bank, it would be Dora's first night in the jungle.

Monday. This was a tiring day as we paddled like crazy and hard. I had no idea what lay in store for us in terms of difficult parts of the river, or delaying obstacles so decided to make as good time as we could. In retrospect, of course, we should have just taken it slowly as the absolute distance we needed to cover wasn't that great, and we ended up having rushed through the most beautiful section of the creek. In spite of this, we did see various monkeys, mainly Squirrel and Brown Capuchin and were serenaded by some Red Howlers. Dora was delighted to run into several groups of Capybara, who splashed into the water with loud nasal snorts, before swimming around, in and underwater, until they were far enough away to be comfortable. The boat drifted past a caiman lying on a pile of flotsam, who suddenly splashed into the water at the last minute giving us a fun fright even though we were looking right at it.

A short clip of caiman, waterfall, capybara and spider monkey.

For me, the best little bit of Nature today was a sloth that had descended some branches down to the water level to drink, and was painfully slowly climbing up again. We happened to be in some fairly fast flowing water, but there was no way in hell I was going to let this fellow get past without a few photos and some footage. We turned the boat and struggled back upstream to get a better look. It wasn't common to see these animals at all, let alone at eye level. After circling the sloth and having a good look, it retracted its head and we were left to look at the pattern of fur between the shoulder blades.

About 45 seconds of footage of the sloth...

A juvenile Tiger Heron, in a photo somewhere above this piece of text, allowed very close approach and a good series of photographs. There were macaws, Nunbirds and parrots all over the place. The river was a series of beautiful falls and rapids which I was already planning to visit again.

At one point I realized that the lens of my camcorder was fogged up (actually, it told me so by refusing to work and then explaining why) so we stopped by a sandy bit of the bank just below some little falls to put the device in the sun and see if the moisture would clear. As we sat there for thirty minutes or so we amused ourselves by trying to lure a curious anjoemara with a colorful wrapper. It worked like a charm, one day I would have to try and spear dinner with an authentic sharpened stick from the Surinamese forest.

As late afternoon approached we came across an island in the creek with rapids on either side, and stopped to investigate. Dora immediately claimed it as her first piece of real estate, Dora's Island, and we decided to camp. We zipped down the left side and approached it from the back, where there was calm water and easier access for landing the boat. I was really tired, and the fish didn't choose to cooperate which was surprising, I expected a few piranha hits at least. I did succeed in getting the lure stuck, and we backed out the boat the next morning to retrieve it. For the moment, we dried our clothes and I let the camera gear simmer in the sun for good measure. We ate an uninspired meal of tinned ham for dinner.

Tuesday.We were approaching a point on the gps marked "Danger", with a fearsome little skull and crossbones symbol. A group that had traveled down the creek before had met some falls that were impassable and probably quite deadly for those inspired enough in the future to give it a go. Sure enough, as we approached we heard the roar of the falls and stopped to peruse the scenario. Well, it didn't seem too bad. I suggested we shoot the water to a strategic rock, making damned sure we didn't miss, then grab the rock, turn the nose of the boat into the stream on its right side, and then follow the rapid flow down. Dora was game, and with all the gear secured, life vests on, we did exactly that. It was quite a rush, and when we emerged into the calm waters below we decided to stop for a self- congratulatory drink, and I think we may have also eaten lunch. The rocks below the falls were beautifully weathered and potholed, and we hung out for a little while.

As we left the roar of the falls, we saw and filmed a solitary and silent Spider monkey who watched us float past with a baleful expression. He may have been laughing at us, around the next corner we could hear an even greater roar of fast water, this was the real Danger Falls marked erroneously on the gps! There was no way we could pull this one off, so we took a spot on the right side bank, which was really steep, where it seemed that even the aquatic jungle animals sought the wiser path to negotiate these falls. There was a definite animal trail, probably used by the otters, capybara and tapirs to get downstream. Bit by bit we dragged our luggage and the boat over the crest and down to a calmer zone below the falls, loaded up again and shot down the passable stream until the water became quite a bit calmer.

A compilation of several clips of the Giant Otters we encountered.

In terms of animals, we passed a bunch of capybara, several groups of giant otters, monkeys aplenty and the crowning event for me was encountering a sunbittern on a rock in the middle of the creek that actually availed itself for filming, and I managed to capture a nice little snippet of footage as we bounced past.

We arrived pretty late at another island which Dora claimed for herself, there were no rapids so I managed to record some sounds. We spent a quiet evening after filming a small rodent with no tail that hung out in the twiggy area under its huge nest, looking like flood debris on a horizontal tree trunk. If the water actually ever got that high there wouldn't be much left of the little island where we had chosen to spend the night. Our flashlights picked up the reflected light from the caiman that stationed himself just offshore, and didn't move for several hours. Dinner was sweet and sour canned tuna, and I was serenaded to sleep by the soft and haunting calls of Tinamous during the night. Perhaps a painkiller helped too. It rained.

The sounds of Macaws talking amongst themselves, about 40 seconds long.

Wednesday. As the water was heating up for coffee in the morning I managed to hook a peacock bass and a couple of piranha for idle entertainment. I could see the bass swimming all around the camp, and had it not been so late and I so lazy we could have had a less uninspired dinner last night. The parrots of Suriname were out and about in force, and as the water was generally very quiet I got to record the sounds here and there. As we were cruising close to the right bank I noticed a bunch of claw marks, and as we turned to examine them a group of otters skidded down and into the water, probably a group that we had already seen the previous day.

We watched and filmed a Spider Monkey languidly making his way around a bunch of ripe Mariphha palm cluster, and encountered a group of Brown Capuchins so wrapped up in what they were doing they didn't notice us floating below them at all. Part of the appeal of this little country for me was that there were huge swathes of wild and inaccessible areas where the wildlife knew no humans. Lucky them, the bushmeat trade hadn't penetrated very far into the jungle-there weren't too many people to have to feed.

Gentle rain began to fall, and we decided to stop and waste some time by trying a spot of fishing. It emerged that Dora had never caught a fish, so we stopped on a sandbank and playfully cast into the calm water, where the piranha were feeling very frisky. I caught a couple and the Dora gave it a go. After a bit of practice, she succeeded in sending the lure to a spot in front of a fish and hooked herself a nice fish, and then refused to remove the hook! I suppose that was understandable.

Water was running low, and the creek's offering wasn't particularly tasty at this stage of its flow. As we were lazily paddling along with quite a thirst on board, we heard the sound of falling water off to our left and paddled over to see if it could help us out. We entered the mouth of a rivulet and saw that water was falling over some rocks, this could be just what we needed. We took along the water bottles and filled up, washed our faces and cooled off. The water tasted great, and there were grooves worn into the rocks where the ancients had sharpened their arrows and tools so I thought that this was a fairly good spot for many reasons.

We found ourselves a day ahead of schedule, and stopped on a group of rocks to contemplate life and eat some cookies, which Dora dipped in peanut butter for herself... probably a regular Banker's habit, but I'm not certain. A group of Giant Otters came round the corner, and then swam back upstream when they noticed us.

We were about to enter the Coppename River just above Raleigh Falls.The creek entered the sluggish Coppename at a sharp angle, and we wandered over to the left side before deciding to maybe keep a sense of rationale, by stopping in the middle before we were too committed to the faster water, and call Pieter, who had run this set of falls twice I believe. We caught him on the satellite phone and he advised us to stay towards the middle, camp on an island just below the first little rapids, and head down the next day. Pieter mentioned that this was probably our last chance to see a jaguar, there was one sighted here now and again by the few and random groups of people who had canoed the Coppename from Tafelberg. We should take the first falls on the left, and the rest on the right side of the river.

We bumped down the first rapid, and headed over to investigate the islands that surrounded us. One had a very nice beach, with a sheltered harbor for the boat, rocks for table and chairs, and trees to sling the hammocks. Perfect. When we beached and wandered into the little set of trees we saw a tapir skeleton, so we decided that there must definitely be a jaguar here somewhere, and we had chosen to camp in his dining room. Dinner was sardines, and Dora managed to attract a bunch of hungry sand fleas whose chomp marks were visible for months, marks she wore with pride.

Thursday 24th. After coffee we packed and waterproofed all the electronics, apart from the little video camera whose loss wouldn't be most costly crisis. Dora would keep that in front with her, as I would probably be feeling the burdens of huge responsibility, and have to try and use my entire brain for sound judgment, something I am not famous for. We set off and found the first drop. We stopped and tried to decide what to do. The very left channel was divided into two levels, but the only problem was that we would get scalped by an overhanging branch. The next channel was a relatively straight shot, with a couple of avoidable rocks but I felt that the water was a bit too boisterous to try as we were both inexperienced paddlers with no helmets. So we decided to walk the boat down on the extreme left. All was going fine until Dora's feet left the channel bed and I was unable to anchor the boat with the extra drag of her body, so we skidded down on our backsides, totally out of control for a few seconds. In the calmer body of water between the drops we gathered ourselves and dragged the boat over a rock and down to the edge of the main flow. I was going to have a spectacular bruise on my right butt cheek, and the outer edge of my right palm. One casualty of this little incident was the tragic loss of my Hooters hat, which was swept off Dora's head. I had acquired this little gem while traveling through Ocala, Florida, on the night of my 40th birthday, and on her return Dora called up the very establishment trying to order another one, but that floppy hat line was discontinued.

We ran the rest of the drops, there were seven or eight, without realizing it. We had thought that all the drops would require intense contemplation over the few miles that are the complex of rapids and drops that make up Raleigh Falls. We would stop before a drop that needed to be scouted, have a look and decide by mutual consent which was the best route to try, hopefully not always the most boring one, embark and shoot down. It was really fun and each drop was interspersed with quieter water, bordered with huge and ancient rocks. After about an hour and a half we arrived at a raunchy waterfall, which we thought must be one of the middle set, but there was a building on a hillside so we had to have been at the bottom. We called Pieter again, and he was amazed by our progress, and thought we should try the big drop.

My descriptions of this part of the paddle haven't been too complete, but a short video here should give an idea of how beautiful it was. We eased the boat around our rock and shot down the rough water, a great thrill. After filming a little we paddled slowly through the big rocks in the river, taking care not to miss Fungu Island where the little resort and airstrip would be. We approached a group of bored looking student-aged tourists swimming and sunning themselves, and beached the boat out of their way. It was curious to note their absolute lack of curiosity at the arrival of a blue canoe, containing a banker in mufti, coming from the wrong direction. But the staff took note, and we were detailed to report to a fellow called Raymond who was curious at how we managed to get there. He lifted the last remaining currency we had, but that was sufficient to get three large "Djogos" of Parbo Beer as well as satisfy the authorities.

By the time we had everything unpacked, the boat deflated, and the whole shooting match hauled up the steep slope to the airstrip, we were feeling no pain. We had chatted a bit to the American Bat researchers who happened to be there, and then trooped up to the airstrip's little shelter to make sure that our gear wasn't loaded onto the wrong plane as a couple of flights were due to arrive. We were a day ahead of schedule, but felt it might be better to head back to Paramaribo as the organization controlling Raleighvallen, STINASU, didn't look kindly on unscheduled arrivals and probably wouldn't have given us a bed for the night. We also had no money. A few hours hike away was a famous lek used by Guianan Cock-of-the-rocks, gorgeous and odd looking orange birds. The males stayed and hopped around one area while the females visited, chose the most suitable mate, copulated and flew off to undertake the rest of the nesting and chick raising process for the next generation in blissful solitude. I would have to stroll to the base of Volzberg, where the lek was situated that the next time I floated in.

A Blue Wing Antonov arrived to remove one group of tourists at about noon, and our little Cessna showed up half an hour later. The pilot emerged carrying a cooler, which contained, of all things, RUM! Most exciting. Winston knew by now that there was never quite enough alcohol taken along, and had guessed correctly that we would have no problem making full use of the new provisions on the flight home. So we continued to get plastered and contemplate what we had just done as the plane bounced over the dense jungle back towards civilization.

At Zorg-en-Hoop we met Winston and tossed the luggage into the bus. First stop was t'Vat for lunch, and then to Dora's hotel where she had to book a room, not having expected to be back a day earlier than scheduled. I took a taxi back to my little room at the farm and passed out on my bed for a while.

I had made the mistake of speaking about my ability to cook a steak, and we had sometime argued about the different methods, probably under the influence of some Surinamese intoxicant, so several slabs of meat were procured and we had a bit of a cook off that night. I brought along some of the raw footage we had taken and it was clear that as videographers we were just no damned good. It was a fun evening, and I was dead tired by the time I got home, but in spite of that I didn't sleep well.

FridayThis was Dora's last day, so we wandered around the downtown of Paramaribo a bit before hitting the café at Fort Zeelandia for lunch. I can't remember what I ate but I did consume a fair bit of an excellent Chilean red, Baron de Rothschild. Dora headed off to try and make arrangements to get herself to the airport, while I braced myself for dinner at the business club. It wasn't too much of a raucous time, but I hit a wall and had to get home.

to be continued...

SaturdayWe had scheduled a visit to the Commewijne Plantation area just east of the Suriname River for today's activity, which for once precluded a plan to drink vast amounts of alcohol. Francesca and Cassandra, her sister, married to one of the Gum Air pilots were taking me for a little tour of this area. I had paddled the Commewijne River two years ago, and the primary memory I had of the little trip was the huge number of ravenous mosquitoes and how quickly a bottle of rum could vanish when attacked by three people. It was a pleasant drive through the mostly Javanese part of town. We ordered fried plantains form a roadside stall, and ate them there. The peanut sauce was so delicious we ordered several pounds of the stuff to go, and set about exploring while it was being made for us.

The first stop was Fort New Amsterdam, which consisted mostly of aged and rusting armaments and gun emplacements from various stages of the history of the place. I wasn't madly interested but did manage to see a few birds that weren't too flighty, amongst them some Green-rumped Parrotlets. We moved on to Marienburg and had a look at a disused sugar mill and alcohol plant. The giant crushers would have been perfect for a movie set, or location for a fashion photographer's muse. A guide walked us through the crumbling buildings and explained the works, but I was a little out of the loop because of my language inadequacies. It would have made a great museum, but the very real prospect of decapitation from falling shards of glass would probably have nixed that idea. Francesca wasn?t feeling very well, and so we ambled back to pick up our peanut sauce, and headed over the bridge into town. Lunch was lamb roti.

I watched Winston being tortured by an extremely cute but tough aerobics instructor as he valiantly tried to shake a pound or two in the interests of general health. I got into the car with my dripping driver and we found a steak house, which unsurprisingly offered up a very average fish dinner. Naturally, a stop at Zanzi-Bar preceded my collapse at about 1.30.

SundayAfter lunch I cleaned up the apartment a little in preparation for the arrival of traveler number three, Jill. The habits I have at home in New York, seemed to have manifested themselves here too, and the place was strewn with electronics and clothing. Winston and I met up with Pieter to try and work out a short and easy trip that was affordable, where Jill could indulge her painting habit and get to see for herself what all the fuss was about. I think that was her major motivation in coming to Suriname, I had come twice and was already thinking about what I could do on the third visit. We drove out to the airport to pick her up at about midnight, and then proceeded to sit around at the apartment and drink too much for too long.

We slept late on Monday and after getting ourselves sorted out wandered into town for Jill's general orientation and a visit to the market. This was something that I had experienced before, but was sure Jill would have a good time with a few of the oddities we would see. As we wandered around the meat department we came across a friendly chap who was selling armadillos, who made it pretty clear that he didn?t want us filming anything by pointedly embedding his machete into a chopping block while glaring at us. I would have loved to have him as a dinner partner. We got around this lack of exhibitionism by turning the camera on while it was dangling from my neck and filming without it being so obvious. We sampled some sweet fruit and bought a couple of things before swallowing a few beers at a waterfront bar. Lunch involved Saoto soup at the Torarica hotel, and then we drove on the northern road along the Suriname River to find the Princess Cadence, a boat that formed the aquatic aspect of Winston's tour empire. It rained and we walked down the Kwattaweg to find an open and un-seedy bar where we could get a drink without scaring the hell out of the newest arrival.

Tuesday Lunch was at the Fort, nothing unusual there, and afterwards we went a little north to find a spot where Jill could sit and paint a landscape. For a couple of hours we parked ourselves at a shrimp boat landing, where Jill gleefully squished out oil paint and produced a very convincing sketch of the boats, which now resides in my room. We bought some tiny shrimp, handed over in a plastic bag which we cooked up and ate later that afternoon. The lack of refrigeration didn't put us off at all, and they were very good.

We had organized a flight to Kayser airstrip, where we would be ferried upstream and then left to float down for a few days. I had wanted to go downstream where the water was a little bigger and I was somewhat familiar with this stretch, having started our long trip here two years ago. But the powers that be for Kayser squashed that idea because they couldn't be certain if there would be someone able to find us on the day the plane would be coming to pick us up again.

to be continued?