Tomorrow, my dad and I will be on our way back home from Suriname. Lots of mixed emotions as we leave. Dad tonight described the trip, the time here together, as "a gift" — and it was — but there's also no denying the difficulty that Suriname faces as a country. I wish we could offer up easy solutions, but I'm afraid there are none.
Our time at Raleigh Falls was encouraging, after what we'd seen at Brownsberg. The area seems well cared for, and Harry Hunfeld, who is in charge of all building projects for STINASU, is doing a great job there. He's putting up new buildings — guest lodges and a remarkable post-and-beam park headquarters — but more importantly, he's powering the park at night off of batteries charged by solar panels during the day, instituting a recycling program, and even adding small touches like putting the ceiling fans on a timer and making outdoor lights motion sensitive. There's a lot of thought going into what they're doing there, and the forest itself is clearly in great shape.
Continue reading "Suriname: On Our Way Home" »
The bus drops us off at the non-descript "tranca" in Chulumani -- the name given here to the place where all traffic comes to a halt, and where the trucks and buses stop to pick up passengers and unload. It's raining. The town is sleepy as always, but especially so now because it is noon-time and most villagers are either in the fields tending their crops, or they are back at home, having lunch.
We find our way to the market, the only place in this small town where business goes on as usual. Stalls of produce and meat are spilling out onto the street because the designated market building can't fit all the 
vendors anymore. One of the caseritas we pass is selling red and yellow mangoes that are amazingly large,
sweet and juicy. At a cost of almost fifty cents of a dollar each, these mangoes are considered a pricey delicacy. We try to bargain with her, but it gets us nowhere. "These mangoes came from around Coripata, almost four hours away, so I'd be losing money if I sold them to you for less," she says. As it turns out, most of the fruit sold in Chulumani is not grown around here. And yet it could be, and once was. The valleys and mountains surrounding this part of Los Yungas are incredibly fertile, but a closer look at the land reveals that it is being exploited to produce mainly one thing these days: coca.
Continue reading "Bolivia: Chulumani, Chicaloma, Ocobaya, Irupana" »
About 10 AM on Monday, we were picked up by our driver for Brownsberg Nature Park, the reserve owned by STINASU to the south of Paramaribo. But our driver, a maroon man who had taken the Chrisitan name Alexander, had come in a pickup, not the van we were told to expect. It's a three-hour drive to Brownsberg — an almost impossible stretch to span without a driving rain in Suriname — so we stopped off at a local store, bought a tarp, wrapped it over our bags, and tied it down. None too soon. Less than an hour from Paramaribo, the rain began, and soon after — just after we passed Alcoa's Paranam mine — the blacktop ended and the road turned into red-clay gumbo. Alexander zigged and zagged around the deepest potholes, but by the time we arrived at Brownsberg, I felt like a paint can fresh from the mixer.
Continue reading "Suriname: Of Birds and Bats at Brownsberg" »
We flew out of Paramaribo on Tuesday morning from the Zorg & Hoop airfield, the small runway within the city that mainly serves as the jumping off point for flights into the interior. Jason, our photographer, missed the flight by about fifteen minutes, but he arranged a later charter out and arrived just a few hours behind us. I don't think it was until we were in the air that I really began to understand the scale of the rainforest. We were out in the midst of it within fifteen minutes, flying just below the clouds, then going for another hour with nothing but the canopy under us for as far as the eye could see, the coffee brown Saramaca River snaking through.
Continue reading "Suriname: Tafelberg" »
Because there are no good roads and little reliable transportation between the different farming communities in Los Yungas, we had to backtrack to La Paz from the town of Coroico in order to get to Chulumani — an important center for coca production in this jungle region.
It's the middle of the rainy season, and there are quite a few landslides
and muddy patches on the old dirt road. We're on the 8 a.m. bus, driving through the fog. Our driver, who appears to be in his mid-twenties, is making the sign of the cross repeatedly with his right hand, while he maneuvers the big wheel with his left. We're passing old faded graffiti in support of Evo Morales. And as the landscape turns from dark and rocky mountains to lush cloud forest, we make the four hour descent to Chulumani. People here say that daytime buses driving to Los Yungas are much safer and less prone to accidents. But those drivers who have to venture out on this road at night, can often be seen chewing massive amounts of coca leaves in order to stay awake and focused on this notoriously curvy, dangerous road.
Continue reading "Bolivia: The Road to Los Yungas" »
According to Ethiopia's unique calendar, the year 2000 started last September. Christmas was two weeks ago, on January 7th, and this weekend, at the end of the twelve days of Christmas, the country's 33 million Ethiopian Orthodox Christians celebrated Timkat, or Epiphany, a commemoration of the baptism of Christ. CLP Audio Producer Jessica Partnow brings us this report from the nation's capitol, Addis Ababa.
Close to 40 hours after leaving Athens, Ohio, I arrived to my destination in Addis. My Emirates flight was not exactly that long...I had two stopovers - four hours in Hamburg and 12 in Dubai. It is the kind of thing you have to contend with when you make a decision to fly cheap. 
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