Commewijne

Commewijne is the country across the river from Paramaribo — the district of the old plantations, where sugar, coffee and cocoa were grown on Dutch dikes by enslaved Africans and, after abolition, by contract labourers brought from India and Java, whose grandchildren still keep the villages and the kitchens. At the point where the Commewijne meets the Suriname stands Fort Nieuw Amsterdam, finished in 1747 to guard both rivers, now an open-air museum with cannon aimed at nothing; around it, along flat green roads, the plantations survive as names, ruins, restored houses and one nature park.

The traveller crosses the bridge or takes the little ferry with a bicycle and rides the dikes — to Peperpot, the coffee-and-cocoa estate gone back to forest, where monkeys and toucans keep the rows; to Marienburg, the sugar factory whose rusting machinery tells the story of the Javanese arrival of 1890; to Frederiksdorp, restored to its plantation-house calm; to Tamanredjo for saoto soup and bami at a Javanese warung —; and at day's end takes the boat to the river mouth, where Guiana dolphins surface at sunset and, in season, sea turtles come ashore at Braamspunt.

The Guide's honesty: this is slow country and asks to be taken slowly — a day trip works, two days let it breathe —; the sun on the dikes is fierce and the shade is intermittent, so water and a hat go in the basket; the dolphin boats depend on the tide and the operator's word about it; the roads are flat but the distances add up, so the bicycle should be a good one; and the Javanese table, from a plastic chair by the road, is the truest lunch in Suriname.