Travel with Indigo

Paramaribo is the capital of Suriname and almost the only place in the entire country that could be called a city.  It lies up a large river that we had to enter using a pilot to guide us through the tricky channels. With no marina, we anchor just off the main hotel and take the tender ashore. It’s a quaint town, with 18th century Dutch architecture evident in its still used government buildings. The country is an amalgam of at least five cultures—Indonesian, African, Dutch, Indian, and Amerindian—and the mix is plain to see on the streets. Mosques sit alongside Indian temples and Baptist churches. We hire a local guy to drive us along dilapidated washed out roads to the site of a 17th century Dutch fort on a rainy day. The grounds are standing in water as is most of the countryside, which in this part of the world, near the equator, would make you think of hordes of mosquitoes, the King of Pests. But in all our travels in this area we never encountered the first one, thanks I assume to all those dragon flies.