Flowers of Rainville

As you could see earlier, there are many nice plants around the houses here. Some of them are surprisingly weird :) and beautiful! See for yourself and mind that the pics were taken only during a short walk in a residential neighbourhood, I wonder what kind of plant we could see in the jungle?

This was a tree with some lime green stuff hanging from a few branches

On a small bush

A flower by the spiky green ball below

The bush was all covered with those flowers, beautiful, they were huge!

This was attached to a palm tree, in front of someone's balcony

I so wish I could go to the jungle!! Hm... maybe I will ;)

Paramaribo - a walk around the city centre

I decided to publish some of the posts from my private blog here, just general stuff, nothing personal. If you want to read some more - go to the other blog. :)

It's soooo hot! I am not sure how long I will be able to put up with it... It reminds me - once I got a few week scholarship - a language course in Serbia, it was sooo hot there that I couldn't stand it and I went back home after two weeks. I couldn't do anything there - it was too hot and humid to go and see the city of Belgrade, to go to museums, pubs etc. Even to the beach. Too hot. So, we'll see how long I will stay in Suriname :P

Nevertheless, it was terribly hot the other day - what a surprise!! - but even though we went - walked!! - to the city centre.

We walked for more less half an hour, stopping every few meters so I could take a picture ;)

The Palmen Tuin - the Palm Garden, apparently a place we should avoid if we don't want to be robbed or even killed, pity, seems like a very nice place.

It wasn't a typical city centre you can imagine. People everywhere, not many side walks, rubbish on the streets and not the best smell, to use a euphemism. But it wasn't so bad, comparing to stories about India. We walked to the river bank,

...walked through a market (you really have to know what you want to buy - I couldn't recognize most of the food there!!)

...and a shopping centre,

I loved the colours

Look at the door posters :)))

It was very difficult to cross the street, we just followed the crowd, in the middle of the street, among the cars...

People are nice to you, and so are shops :D

I didn't get to the mosque yet, just took a pic from a distance, but I liked the truck with the two looking-like-towers bottles.

I've seen a few of those, it must be in fashion now :)

Some kids coming back from school

Found in a shop ;)

...we exchanged money, risked to eat out

The place where we ate, pretty decent food, no stomach ache ;)

Rice with vegetables and super hyper hot peppers, which I didn't even smell!

...and went back home by taxi.

I must say that I quite liked what I saw - the buildings, the river, the shops, even if it wasn't the most pleasant view sometimes.

There were quite a few buildings like this...

And the most important - the people. They are so nice. Smile a lot, wave to Aga, want to hold her - she didn't share their excitement - she waved and smiled, but didn't let them pick her up. Such a smart girl! The only person who gained her trust is a very nice lady who cleans at our hotel. She's 45, has 4 kids - the oldest is 25. She was VERY surprised that we only have one child. But she is very nice, she does our dishes :D And she gave Aga a baloon. :)

Well, the last days passed very quickly and quite unproductively - it rained for the last two - three days, and rain + heat = disaster! Btw, I haven't seen such a heavy rain for a while!

It rained like this for a few hours, apparently the rainy season hasn't finished yet.

A sample of the rain

Oh no, there was one productive thing - we went to check out the swimming pool I learnt about from the Internet. I didn't even expect something so nice. The pool itself is not big, but with my swimming 'skills' it's really good enough, but there is also a tennis court and other sport places, which I saw from a distance, so I am not sure what they exactly were. But we got a nice tour around the premises with the janitor ;) The tickets are 15 SRD (~3,50 Euro) so we may visit it more often :)

A path through Rainville, Paramaribo, Suriname

It was just a walk around the block...

There are a lot of small streets around here, where the actual street in between the house rows is not even paved, it's just dirt path. The houses may differ one from another a lot. There are nice, big, nicely painted houses, with colourful, flowery bushes around, as well as old, wooden, surrounded by dry sticks, that used to be nice plants or trees. People have so many things in their gardens, from old cars, half-eaten by rust to huge satellite dishes, that look to me as some kind of UFOs. There is so much contrast here - beautiful things right next to ugly ones, road signs hidden in bushes, a beautiful mosque next to an terrible storage building... It's really hard to take a decent picture...

Beautiful garden plants

Also nice wall art, maybe not very artistic, but colourful and optimistic :)

Palm trees are everywhere, really tall, distinctive and distinguished, look like tailor made

Some old playground, pity, because there aren't many parks or places where you can sit and relax

A weird pipe ending in the air. And the dog was looking at me all the time,

apart from the split second when I pressed the shutter ;)

That's one of the satellite dishes. On the left you can see a trash stand,

they put their rubbish up high so the animal didn't tear the bags apart

A pretty nice - from my arty point of view - house, very old and neglected,

but somehow cute, especially the curtain

Just a picture that I think is funny

And another one, interestingly very similar

A cat, one of few that I saw here. People have many dogs though, very noisy, barking all the time...

A street, one of the 'main' streets here. Quite peaceful and quiet. It's getting dark, 7 pm.

And one of the American 'traditions' came to Suriname too... The shops are well prepared ;)

A really nice mosque, I didn't know there was one in the neighbourhood, I have to go there again,

when we remember to switch off the rice cooker before we leave for a walk ;)

One of the few traffic lights around here

That would be it for today, I hope I have demonstrated at least a little bit of the district spirit to you.