Today we woke up at around 8am and headed straight to the Surinamese Embassy as our first oder of business. Since our group were mostly USA and UK nationals, we needed a visa before heading into Suriname the next day by bus (unfortunately visas on arrival were not possible for the overland border).
Make sure you wear long pants and closed-toe shoes as the dress code is strictly enforced here.
For USA nationals, a single entry tourist card/visa is $25 USD, and a 5 year multiple-entry visa is $105 USD. There is nothing in between. If you’re a EU national, you can get the multiple entry 5-year visa for $45 USD.
The visa process requires:
- US Dollars (crisp and clean; they WILL refuse ripped bills) in hand for the visas
- A photocopy of the frontpage of your passport
- A photocopy of your latest entry stamp into Guyana.
If you lack the photocopies, they’ll send you down the block to a convenience shop called Sylvie’s Snackette that happens to offer a xerox machine for 20 cents a copy.
After getting the photocopies and putting in our visa applications at the Surinamese embassy, we were told to return 4 hours later for pickup. So we returned to the city center and got brunch at Shanta’s.
After lunch, we walked towards Main Street.
Once hitting Main Street, we first headed uptown to see the Prime Minister’s house as he was driving out.
Then we passed by the official Guyanese Olympic HQ:
In the very northwestern part of the city, we swung by a “tourist attraction” called Umana Yana, a project commissioned by the Surinamese government in 1979 for $26,000 USD to recreate an old Amerindian conical palm thatched hut.
When we visited, the hut was gone, having been gutted by fire and destroyed 7 months ago on September 2014.
5 minutes further north of Umana Yana is the Northern Seawall facing the Caribbean Sea.
We then took Bus 45 south to Stabroek Market, the heart and soul of Georgetown with its frenetic indoor and outdoor markets.
We then walked slightly north from the market to check out the old colonial town consisting of the newer, more modern Parliament building…
…and otherwise precariously still-standing, massive wooden structures of a bygone era.
This included St. Andrew’s Church:
The City Engineers Department:
The Supreme Courthouse:
City Hall:
And St. George’s Cathedral, the tallest wooden church in the world:
Afterwards, we headed back to the Surinamese Embassy to pick up our passports and visas. Once that was done, we returned to our guesthouse to rest up before our 4am overnight bus to Paramaribo, Suriname.
- At time of posting in Georgetown, Guyana, it was 24 °C - Humidity: 93% | Wind Speed: 13km/hr | Cloud Cover: rainy