Commewijne

Commewijne lies across the river from the capital and was the plantation district, where sugar, coffee and cacao were grown by enslaved Africans and later by indentured labourers brought from Java and India. Their descendants still farm the polders. The land is flat and the dykes are surfaced, which makes it the one part of Suriname best seen from a bicycle. Fort Nieuw Amsterdam sits at the confluence as an open-air museum of the colonial defences. Frederiksdorp has been restored as a plantation you can sleep in. The Marienburg sugar factory stopped work in 1986 and its machinery still stands.