Eco-Friendly Stays in Surama — Your 2026 Guide to Sustainable Travel

Why Surama for Sustainable Travel

Surama's story is the rare ecotourism success that survives contact with reality. The land was inhabited sporadically for centuries — an early-20th-century cattle trail ran through it — but by the 1970s the area was deserted. In 1974, brothers Fred and Theo Allicock founded the modern village. When the Linden-Lethem road arrived in the late 1970s, accessibility changed; in 1996 the village welcomed its first tourists, and the money visitors paid for their stay funded Surama's first guest lodge.

From that single lodge grew the Surama Eco-Lodge of today: thatched benabs built from local materials, meals cooked by village families from village gardens, and a guiding collective trained in bird identification, rainforest ecology and Makushi tradition. The recognition followed — in 2011 National Geographic listed the lodge among the best hotels in Colombia, Guyana and Venezuela, and that same year it was joint winner of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation's Excellence in Sustainable Tourism Award.

The setting does the rest. Surama's 13 square kilometres are bounded by the Iwokrama Forest protected area — one of the world's great experiments in sustainable rainforest management — the Burro-Burro River and the Pacaraima Mountains, with Surama Mountain rising to the east. The village sits exactly on the seam between two ecosystems: savannah stretching to the horizon one way, old-growth forest the other. That ecological border makes it one of the best birding bases in South America, with harpy eagles, jabirus and macaws all within reach.

Where to Stay in and Around Surama

Surama Eco-Lodge — Community-Owned Benabs

The village's own lodge offers comfortable thatched cabins with verandas facing the savannah, mosquito-netted beds, solar-powered lighting and showers fed by rainwater. Rates include meals prepared by village families using produce from community gardens — cassava, plantain, fresh river fish. Profits go back into village infrastructure, scholarships and conservation patrols. This is the stay that put Surama on the map.

Surama Village Homestays

For deeper immersion, several families host guests in their homes. You sleep, eat and spend your evenings the way the village does — learning to make cassava bread, hearing Makushi stories, joining family meals. Homestay income flows directly to individual households, multiplying the benefit of every tourist dollar.

Nearby: Iwokrama & the North Rupununi

Surama is the perfect base for day trips into the Iwokrama Forest's canopy walkway, the Burro-Burro River for black caiman spotting, and the wetlands of the North Rupununi for giant river otters and birdlife. A string of community lodges — from Rewa to Aranaputa — extends the same model across the region, letting you hop between villages on the savannah's red-earth roads.

How IMPT Makes Your Guyana Stay Carbon-Negative

Here's the maths. An average hotel night produces roughly 35 kg of CO₂ — from air conditioning, laundry, lighting, and food service. When you book any Surama stay through IMPT, we retire 1,000 kg of UN-verified carbon removal credits. That's 28 times what your stay produces. Not carbon-neutral — carbon-negative.

The cost to you? Zero. IMPT funds the removal from its booking commission. You pay the standard nightly rate — in fact, IMPT is the same price as Booking.com on the same room. The carbon credits are tokenised on Ethereum, retired against a named project, with a public retire code anyone can verify. No double-counting. No greenwashing. Just verified carbon removal, every night.

• €5 free credit when you sign up — applied to your first Guyana booking
• 5% back on every stay — 3% funds carbon projects, 2% as travel credit
• 8M+ hotels worldwide, 195 countries — Surama is just the start
• Free cancellation on most rates, typically up to 48 hours before check-in

Sustainable Things to Do in Surama

Birding is the headline: the savannah-forest border around Surama hosts over 400 recorded species, and the village guides are among the finest in the region — several have been trained in formal bird monitoring. Dawn walks along the Burro-Burro River reward early risers with sunbitterns, kingfishers and, if you are lucky, a harpy eagle cruising the canopy.

Climb Surama Mountain for the panorama: savannah to the west, rainforest to the east, the Pacaraima range on the horizon. Swim in the river's clear pools, join a cassava-grinding session in the village, and try the traditional pepperpot. In the evening, guides run spotlight boat trips for black caiman and giant river otters — thrilling, and strictly observe-and-leave.

Extend your trip north to Kaieteur Falls — the world's largest single-drop waterfall by volume — or south to Lethem on the Brazilian border. And when you're done? Shop through IMPT's 25,000+ retail partners to earn cashback on every purchase that also offsets carbon, or send a trip credit gift so someone else can experience community-led rainforest travel.

Beyond Hotels — More Ways IMPT Works in Guyana

Corporate travel to Guyana? IMPT's B2B Corporate Travel platform gives teams exclusive rates, automatic ESG reporting across Scope 1, 2 and 3, and a single dashboard tracking every booking's carbon impact. Business plans start at $99/month; Enterprise at $250/month. For CSRD compliance needs, automated sustainability reporting is ready out of the box.

Planning to fly? IMPT Flights adds carbon offset at checkout when it launches in H2 2026, with Platinum Goodness members getting an extra 2% discount. In the meantime, redeem carbon voucher gifts — from $40 for 3 months of credits — or explore verified climate projects directly.

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