A trip to Galibi (Suriname) to see the turtles. July-August 2004

Last year I went with my sister and her daughter Tessa, at that time 9 years old, to Suriname. One of the highlights was seeing the Turtles.

Suriname is a country at the Northeast coast of South America between Guyana and French Guyana, bordering towards the south with Brazil and Venezuela. The population is around 300,000 and like Malaysia, it is a multicultural society. The biggest groups are the Creoles: they came as slaves during the 18 and early 19 centuries, and Indians, immigrants from India after 1863. There are also Javanese, Chinese, Europeans, Jews, Native Indians and Bush Negroes. This last group came forth from escaped slaves.

This is also the only country in the world where you can find a mosque next to a Synagogue and where they enjoy visiting each other at festive occasions.

Suriname is famous for its birds, and birdwatchers come here to see the unique birds. Also typical Surinamese is that you see people, mainly guys, coming to the Independent square on Sunday mornings with their cage birds; often they have bird singing competitions. You also can see guys taking their bird for a walk or take their birds on a motorbike ride, and they really love their bird and take good care of it.

Tessa had never been in Suriname and enjoyed every single moment, she went swimming in crystal clear water at Cola Creek, a beautiful river with a recreation spot and no rubbish is floating here. They also made nice beaches on the bank of one of the main rivers (Suriname River) and made a strong net around it so that you can’t be attacked by Piranha’s (carnivorous fishes).

The Galibi Nature Reserve is situated in the Northeast corner of Suriname, at the mouth of the Marowijne River, which forms the border with French Guiana. Because the salty Guiana Current of the Atlantic Ocean and the freshwater flow of the Marowijne River run into each other along the east and north borders of the reserve, it is exposed to many different ecological factors. This results in a great biological diversity.

The Galibi reserve and the nearby Native Indian villages are accessible only by boat, about 1 1/2 hours downstream from the embarkation point, Albina, which is a village near the French border at the Marowijne River.

We booked our Galibi tour at one of the local travel agents and the service was excellent. You had no time to get hungry or thirsty. They took breakfast and lunch and everything was homemade, between the meals they gave snacks like fried banana or cake and the ginger lemonade is delicious.

We left Paramaribo, the Capital, at 8 am and drove towards Albina. The road was full of potholes, but after a while we got used to almost hitting our head at the ceiling or end up on your neighbor’s lap.

At Albina we got into a motorized longboat (canoe) and it took about 1 hour to reach Galibi. Galibi is a Carib word for 'watchman'. This is a wonderful place to relax for a few days.
The Galibi Nature Reserve is world famous as a nesting site for endangered sea turtles. Four species come ashore to lay their eggs between February and August. Here are undisturbed sea turtle nesting beaches, where you have an excellent chance to see three species: the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas), the leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea), and the olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea). A fourth species, the hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata) nests only sporadically in Suriname with rarely more than twenty-five nests per year for whole coast. The olive ridley population that nests on the beaches of Galibi may be near to extinction. In the late sixties, this population was abundant enough to produce arribadas (mass nesting aggregations). In 1968, more than 3,000 olive ridleys nested in Galibi. It is shocking to learn that by 1995, this number had declined to only 335. The leatherback is the largest sea turtle, reaching over 2 m length, and the population that nest in Suriname and French Guiana is one of the largest in the world. The amount of leatherback nests in Suriname has increased strikingly during the last 30 years, perhaps due to eroding nesting beaches in French Guiana. Numbers increased from 200 in 1968 to as much as 12,401 in 1985.

Green turtle nesting in Suriname has been steady since 1968. The average number of nests laid each year varies between 5,000 and 6,000. The green turtles nesting in Suriname are among the largest in the world. (Source WWF and Stinasu)

We had a good rest while lying in our Brazilian hammocks and Tessa enjoyed swimming in the river. Here there were no piranhas or crocodiles, so it was safe.

At 8pm we left again by boat across the river to the French side because at the Suriname side the season was finished for the Green Turtles and also for the Leatherback turtles but at the French site we had still a good chance to see them, although it was almost the end of the season.

Tessa was really exited and the sky was so beautiful, no moon, and lots of stars. This, together with the sound of the peddles in the water, was unforgettable. Everybody was quiet to enjoy the silence of nature. If you looked carefully you could see the satellites moving and we were trying to see the planets.

It took one hour to get across and when we reached the shore, I held Tessa’s hand firmly to be sure that she could not be carried away by the strong waves, and we got out of the canoe.

Our guide, a Native Indian spotted a leatherback turtle busy laying her eggs and we all walked quietly towards the turtle as he explained how many eggs it was laying: that was usually around 100. Tessa was sitting so close to the turtle that we had to watch her not to fall into the nest hole. One of her questions was whether the baby could find the mother back when it came out. He found also a place were a baby turtle just came out of the nest and Tessa named it after her own name, so somewhere in the ocean is a little Tessa swimming across the vastness.

Who knows that somehow Tessa will come back twenty years later and maybe she will meet “Tessa” again laying her eggs and hoping that also these baby turtles will be preserved for her children to see the unique turtles