Suriname starts here
Small country. Big heart.
Small country. Big heart.
The platform
Grietjebie® (pronounced "greet-yuh-bee") is the platform for anyone who wants to discover the real Suriname. A country with more sides than you can see in one trip, warm to visitors, and full of places you'd never have found on your own. We bring it all together: tours, places to stay, honest food, and a culture that runs deep. All in one place.
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Sun, nature and Surinamese food while it’s cold at home
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From the city to the rainforest
Featured
Twenty minutes outside Paramaribo the landscape changes. The city falls away, the creeks appear, and somewhere among the trees in Tamanredjo lies Sendang Redjo, tucked around a private lake and open by reservation only. What you'll find: a private lake, wooden cabanas built in the Javanese style, hammocks looking out over the water, and a quiet so complete that after five minutes you forget you'd been missing it. This isn't a resort with a programme. It's a place that lets you breathe at your own pace.
In the district of Nickerie, well off the tourist routes, the Maratakka river winds through a landscape most people never see. Moriche palms along the banks, quiet on the water, and animals going calmly about their business because people simply don't come here often. Blue-and-yellow macaws in pairs, giant otters hunting piranha, and manatees rising slowly out of the dark water. A harpy eagle that looks straight at you and stays exactly where it is. Your guide from Unlock Nature knows this area inside out, and knows precisely where and when.
Just across the bridge lies another world. Commewijne isn't a place that shouts for attention, it whispers. Along the river, between the old plantations and the cecropia trees, this district tells a story of power, labour, sugar and survival. It's not a long drive from Paramaribo. But you come back from it a little different than you went.
Four to five hours on the water along the Upper Suriname River, past Maroon villages and rapids, and then the island appears. Kumalu Dream Island sits in the middle of the river, surrounded by rainforest and the kind of quiet you never find in Paramaribo. This three-day tour is built around two highlights: the Ananasberg, a climb that rewards you with a view you don't see coming, and the Tapawatra sula, one of the finest sets of rapids in the Surinamese interior.
There are restaurants you go to for the food. And there are places you go to for the feeling. Eethuis LIV is both. A snug little restaurant on the Brumastraat in Paramaribo, where chef Gregory Lehman cooks everything himself — with care, with patience, and with the flavours Suriname is known for.
You don't have to choose between being in the city and sleeping well. At Villa Claus-Casimir you get both. This colonial-style villa sits in the middle of downtown Paramaribo, within walking distance of the best restaurants and bars in the city, and yet the moment the gate closes behind you it's as if the world pauses for a while.
Fifty kilometres south of Paramaribo, on the Suriname River, lies a place most people never find. Redi Doti is an Indigenous village in the middle of the forest, walking distance from the river and cycling distance from one of the most remarkable historic sites in Suriname. Here you don't learn history from a book. You walk through it.
Wanawiro. Avanavero. Two names few people know and nobody forgets. The island sits in the middle of the Kabalebo river, surrounded by the rapids of the Avanavero falls, deep in the Amazon rainforest. Thirteen hours of driving. The moment you arrive, you understand why.
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Every place gets the story it deserves.
Towards stronger tourism for Suriname.
We give back to Suriname.
Built out of love for the country.
Read & Discover
20 July 2026
Most visitors to Suriname cross the river for one thing: Fort Nieuw Amsterdam and a plantation or two. They get out, take a photo and head back to Paramaribo. Understandable. But anyone who sees Commewijne that way misses the real story. Because Commewijne is, first of all, a nature district. Mangrove forest along the riverbanks, a protected nature park in the middle of former plantation land, creeks full of tukunari and, always in the background, the sound of birds. More than 300 species, to be precise.
26 June 2026
You don't even have to open your eyes. It's early morning in Suriname, the sun is barely up, and then you hear it. Three notes, loud and clear, as if someone is calling you personally: griet-je-bie! Heard once, never forgotten. This is the sound of Suriname. The grietjebie is no rare sighting. It sits in your back garden, on the power line in front of your house, on the neighbour's roof and in the tree beside the church. All over Suriname, from central Paramaribo to deep in the rainforest, this bird makes its presence known. Not subtly, either. It's the first bird most visitors to Suriname hear and recognise.
