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Suriname 🇸🇷: Lazy sloths & busy monkeys in Groningen

Groningen is a small town (5,000 inhabitants) to the west of Paramaibo and home to many weekend houses of wealthy parbo’s. It has a really nice and relaxed feeling helped by its location right on the river, friendly people, hungry dogs and is pretty clean (weekly cleaning efforts make all the difference). We enjoyed a morning river tour and visited the local sloth rescue center.

Laura’s comment: The place is very quiet for a short vacation, a lot of silence and the people are very friendly. Without a doubt a nice experience 😊

Wild life spotting with Harry 🐒🐦🦅🐟

We had heard from Carsten about the Bloemendal lodge and its morning river cruise. While we stayed elsewhere, the tour is open to non-guests at Eur25/head. Just give them a call beforehand.

 


 

Promptly at 6.30am we got picked up by Harry – a former dutch pig farmer that resettled to Suriname 14y ago with his wife. He was our capitain for the day.

 

During our 2.5h cruise we spotted many monkeys (all Capuchins) though not really visible in the jungle pics below, many birds (eg toucans) yet sadly no manatees. That the river is full of fish was already evident during our stroll the previous day – loads of very busy fishermen along the river.

 

Saoto soup – our favourite
I dont know how many times we had this originally Javanese soup. Be it with egg or chicken or both  … It was laura’s and my favorite dish by far.
saoto-soep

 
 

Sloth Wellness Center… Little cuties 🤗

Harry mentioned a local sloth rescue center – something not even our guesthouse hosts had visited and they live here 20y already. Maybe because of that our host gave us a lift to this arguably a bit hidden place.

 

We were welcomed even though one usually requires a reservation and best visits in the afternoon, as the animals usually return to base that time.

 

There are two kind of sloth in Suriname – the two-toed and the three-toed version. The latter is active during the day and moves very slow. This in turn relates to their low energy diet requiring 4 stomachs to digest (why is unclear given the abundance of fruit). The two toed sloth is in turn nocturnal and eats everything. It is by no means slow and can actually be aggressive.

We saw 2 three toed sloth hanging out in the trees and, as a special treat, got to see the indoor raised 8mth two sloth baby… Adorable!

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