Without the usual myriads of boat chores/repairs to do we have had some time for sightseeing in Suriname. This has been accomplished at a leisurely pace with frequent stops for Parbo beer at the numerous Chinese corner grocery stores where the beer is kept at a respectable -2 deg C.
One of the first places we went was Fort New Amsterdam (Nieuw Amsterdam), built by a private company (one of them the city of Amsterdam) who promised to defend the inland plantations of the colony of Suriname - at a profit. To facilitate construction the foremen and artisans were European and building methods were European; manual labour was supplied by slaves.
The fort is located at the confluence of the Suriname and Commewijne rivers and is a large earthen structure with five bastions. Planning began in 1734 and by 1747 much of it was finished, with many of the buildings constructed of wood. Almost as soon as they were put-up the bridges, barracks and many of the other structures started to deteriorate because of the tropical environment and millions of termites. Everything was continuously under repair and ongoing costs kept escalating.
As a fort it had little success and by the 19th century it was was of no use as a defensive position, so in 1872 part of the barracks was set up as a prison. (Until 1967 this was the only prison in Suriname.) The fort was officially decommissioned in 1907 but during the Second World War the fort was unofficially recommissioned and used by the Americans to defend their bauxite resources. During this same time period the prison was used to house 146 suspected Nazi sympathizers from Indonesia.
Little remains of the original fort except structures that were constructed of brick. These included the water reservoirs (constructed in 1740 to serve as water sources for the garrison), the powder magazine (also constructed in 1740 it quickly became unusable because the dampness destroyed the gunpowder), the powder house (constructed in 1778 to replace the powder magazine but also subject to dampness) and the prison (originally this was the barracks). There is also a derelict lightship (built in 1905) sitting in a "puddle" of water that does not seem to be connected to the river. How it got in this puddle is a mystery.
We visited on a Sunday and assumed it would be crowded because it is a pleasant place to walk, but most of the visitors were local family groups eating large picnic lunches in the shade and the paths were empty. Apparently it is easy to get to the fort from Paramaribo by taking a passenger ferry across the Suriname river but we are fortunate because a friend from Canada is living here, so we drove.
Bird of the day - a wattled jacana and her two chicks striding on the giant lily pads by the powder house.
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