Mariënburg

Craig and I hired a car and left the boat for a few days. The first thing we did was get stuck in the mud. 🙈 In Craig’s defence, it was my fault. I suggested that we park in the only shady spot around. Because it rains every day, the shady spots never dry out and are in fact well-concealed swampy spots. Luckily help was driving by, so we were rescued. We had a wonderful (but hot) afternoon in the Peperpot Nature Reserve, visited the open air museum and had two nights of aircon! 😅 We also visited some old plantation sites. In the 1600’s when the Dutch took over, they started plantations to export colonial products like sugar, coffee, and cocoa. They were extremely successful but only because they used slaves and were apparently some of the cruelest slave masters at the time. When slavery was finally abolished in 1863, the plantations folded and there are no working plantations in Suriname anymore.Read more