Already yesterday afternoon I had a quick look of Georgetown and could not figure out what to think of this very unique city with a mixture quite new to me but with certain similarities with Jamaica. The first impression was definitely that this country and this city were not very wealthy or the government spends the money wrong. Unfortunately there were a lot of poor people in the streets sleeping on the floor, drunk and speaking to themselves or shouting towards everybody. This morning this was not the case, it was Saturday morning and everybody was still asleep.

I sneaked into the city and had a glimpse of the few historic buildings, abandoned but still in use. I was early but not alone and the market people came in and started to build up their stands, in the beginning few but then hundreds and at the end thousand. The whole center of the city was one market with the shops being within the buildings, then a narrow passage way to walk for pedestrians and opposite the shops some kind of market stand. I walked to the port area and the same picture; I walked towards the other end of the center and the same picture.

I went to the food market and located a quite busy corner food stand. The two definitely Indian looking ladies were very busy in the morning and I asked for some pine juice. I received a big glass cup with ice cubes and a straw. The pine juice was delicious, sweet, refreshing and cheap. I had another one and another one. I needed one more as I tried the egg potato with salt and pepper. In this case salt and pepper were two sauces of which obviously one was salty and the other one hot. The hot was hot, not very hot but hot and it was good. I was tempted by some Indian food smell already in Surinam but resisted. This time I could not resist and tried this small snack.

I continued my sightseeing and shot the obligatory pictures of the few historical buildings in the center worth considering. Worth considering was definitely the whole market atmosphere, the diversity of the goods and the people, the children and the smell of the food. The market stand was a family business and included numerous children. I went back to my Indian place and had lunch, pine juice and egg potato with salt and pepper. The stand was busy like in the morning and now at lunch needed another staff and a bicycle driver to fill up.

In the afternoon I walked up and down the Main Street along the house of the prime minister and other official administration buildings. The Main Street was an avenue with a wide pedestrian center lane with huge trees to give plenty of shade in the humid heat.

I wanted to have a quiet and dark frontline beach parking space for the night and went to the sea. The first place I stopped, staff was about to open up the typical children games and all frontline beach benches were already occupied with families awaiting the sunset and the activities to start. This was not the place I was looking for but I parked the car to see if I could take some sunset pictures. Right opposite my parking a young girl painted the face of little girl. I had a look at the artist work when the little girl turned round, looked at me, got up and walked towards me to give me hug. No words, just got up and walked towards me to give me hug. How did she know that I needed a hug?

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