Saïrah To Adventure

I’m all for planning my own trips; local & international. It gives you the freedom to customize the experience to your liking and most importantly, you get to choose your group!

I’ve been getting more and more DM’s from people who want to, or are in the middle of, planning their own trip and there’s one question that keeps returning: “how can I go to the Tapawatra rapids and where can I stay?”. So I decided to write down everything I know, so you can start planning your trip!

In this blog you’ll see:

• Where to stay (with visuals and contact info).
• What to do in the area.

For your convenience, I made the names clickable. So all the underlined & bold words are clickable and lead to the correct social media pages & more.

Keep reading, leave a comment & share if you like it.

The Tapawatra sula (rapid)

The Tapawatra rapid, located at the confluence of the Gran Rio and Pikin Rio of the upper Suriname river, is a beautiful and unique rapid that stretches across the entirety of the river. In the dry season you get an amazing view of all the green water plants and big rocks that the rapid consists of. It’s about a 3 hour boat ride from Atjoni and I would not recommend going on this trip with small children.

Where to stay?

Kumalu Dream Island

Kumalu Dream Island is a resort located a little further than Tapawatra. It’s a nice, clean & relaxing resort with houses for small & big groups and various camps where you can tie your hammock. 2 of the houses have a bathroom-shower area attached to them and for the other houses there is a group of shared bathrooms & showers.

You don’t have to worry about charging your electronic devices because there is electricity from 6pm till 12am (sometimes a little longer). There is a kitchen/dining room where you can cook all your meals yourself OR arrange for your meals to be cooked for you.

For more info about prices you can contact:

• Kumalu Dream Island (click to go to their FB page)
• Call: +597 713-6926

Royal Masia Resort

In March 2023 I went to Royal Masia Resort for the first time and I absolutely loved it! The resort itself is beautiful, clean, quiet, relaxing and the owner, mr. Freddy, is very friendly and helpful. The houses have rooms upstairs and downstairs with 2 to 3 beds inside each of them, 1 full bathroom downstairs (which you do share with the upstairs room). All fully tiled and very clean! There are 2 kitchen-dining room areas where you can cook OR arrange for the people who work there to cook for you.

The view is amazing from every room! Once you step off the stairs there’s a flat rock you can walk on, that stretches to a big, round rock almost in the middle of the river. There are also a few small rapids you can easily sit in (but don’t underestimate them because the water flows hard). The entire resort is beautiful as can be seen on the video above.

For more info about prices, you can call:

• +597 767-5727
• +597 890-0286

What else to do in the area?

Each resort has their own set of activities that they offer, so definitely ask them about it when booking. But generally, in that area you can:

• Visit the Tapawatra rapid
• Hike to Pineapple mountain (Ananasberg)
• Visit the Saamaka Museum at Pikin Slee (click to watch a video tour of the museum)

Finally I would like to point out that all resorts either have their own boat or they can arrange boat transportation for your group. However if for some reason this is not the case, PLEASE CONTACT ME so I can get you in contact with reliable boat transportation!