French Guiana is a French Département. Just as much a part of France as Marseilles or Epernay. Cars have French license plates, the Tricouleur (and EU) flag fly all over the country. And if we'd had any doubt, it was dispelled when shortly after arriving in Saint Laurent du Maroni we found ourselves standing at the corner of Boulevard De Gaulle and Rue Victor Hugo.
In its earlier life, French Guiana's primary raison d'etre was acting as a prison camp for incorrigible or serious criminals and political prisoners. This went on for almost a century, from the mid 19th to mid 20th century. And for almost all of that time, St. Laurent was the "prison colony"'s capital.
Most of the original structures from this area remain and are in good (and/or being restored) condition, so it's a very pretty town, complete with a pleasant riverfront park.
We spent our evening in Saint Laurent at a hair salon/carbet (a carbet is to French Guiana as a Benab is to Guyana: a wall-less roofed structure in which to gather and often hang a hammock for sleeping.)
For the provision of a spot to hang up our own hammocks and mosquito nets we paid 10 Euros each.
We'd been warned that French Guiana was an expensive place to travel (even moreso than France) and this was evidence of the fact. Because of the expense of travelling there, we'd struggled to figure out how to make the best of our time in French Guiana.
In the end we decided to rent a car. While a one-way rental was a pricey proposition, Public transportation was reportedly unreliable and expensive too. Plus there were several factors in favour. The roads are generally good. The standard of driving is no worse than in "mainland" France. And having our own transportation would allow us to see a lot in a short space of time, and to get places where we could sleep in our hammocks for free. And at worst we could just sleep in the car itself.
So at 08:30 on Friday morning we picked up Evee, the red Kia Picanto who would be our companion for the next 72 hours.
It was a real novelty being able to go wherever we wanted, so the first morning we cruised along making detours on a whim. The first was a failure (drove 20km out of our way, saw nothing but closed roadside souvenir (wooden carving) stands, turned around and drove back.
The second was a bit more successful and illustrated one of the big differences between travelling in French Guiana and the other two Guyanas.
We pulled over by a sign reading "Eco-Musee Admission Libre."
Out in the middle of nowhere there was a tower to climb for views out over the surrounding landscape, and small museum with aquaria, animal identification posters and maps, and a walkway/boardwalk through the wetlands and savannah (we'd missed out on Giant Anteaters in the Rupununi and sadly didn't spot any there either).
It was a much more tidy, formal and organized tourism experience than we'd got in either of the two previous countries, but also less warm and personal.
Just down the road we turned off the N1 onto a sideroad. The sideroad started out passing through small cattle ranches, but before too long we were surrounded by forest on both sides. We drove about 25km, almost all the way to the end and the start of the Sentier de Saint Elie hiking trail.
We weren't prepared for multiple nights out in the jungle on our own, but we could spend the night at the Carbet communale de Saint Elie.
We arrived and set up our hammocks, ate lunch then, once the day had cooled a bit, went out to walk the Sentier Botanique, a 2.5km trail through the jungle nearby.
The forest was so thick and dark that I think we would've been just fine walking through it even during the hottest part of the day. But it was still very well maintained, with just a lot of leaf litter on the ground and virtually no sticks, roots of fallen trees across the path.
This was a bit of a surprise, as it didn't seem like the trail got tons of use. It was Friday afternoon and we didn't see another soul, either on the trail or at the carbet. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there wasn't even another car that passed on the "main" (still paved, but pretty narrow) road the entire time we were there.
The evening was nice. We drank our bottle of wine (one thing that [at least to NZ eyes] isn't terribly expensive in French Guiana!) as it cooled. Two nighthawks hopped and bobbed around us and small chriping and big ribbiting frogs took over from the cicadas. Far from civilization, deep in the jungle and secure in our mosquito net fortresses, this was one of the nicest nights we spent in the Guyanas.
The next morning just as we and the sun rose we were startled by the unearthly sound of a pack of howler monkeys. I'm not even sure what verb to use for the sound they make. It's very hard to describe, but I go with "echoing ghoulish grunts."
They'd calmed down by the time we were ready to depart, so it was off to the city of Kouoru (via another stop at the Savannah/wetland trail 'cause we had five hours til our appointment in Kourou and only 85km or so to cover to get there.)
We also stopped at Montagne des Singes (literally "Monkey Mountain"). We'd been thinking about spending the night there, so decided to check out the carbets and walking trails. It was only about 7km off the N1, and as this was a Saturday it was quite busy with families on weekend outings or individuals looking for a bit of exercise.
We were dissuaded from our plan of spending the night by the fact that the first carbet was about 300m into the forest and a sign warning that the parking lot wasn't secure and that overnight parking should be avoided. But we decided to head up the second carbet anyway and, without really realizing what we were doing, ended up climbing to the summit of the mountain where there weren't any monkeys visible, but where we did get a cool breeze and a view out over the surrounding landscape, including the ocean and the distant Iles des Saluts.
Back down (actually only 180m or so) at the foot of the mountain we rejoined Evee and drove to Kourou and the CSG (Centre Spatial Guyanese) for our tour of France and the EU's space launch facility. You have to pre-book the tours, but the folks at the centre were very responsive and helpful, even when we changed our desired date a couple of times.
French Guiana is a great spot for rocket launches. It's geologically (and politically) stable, and not in a tropical cyclone area. And sitting just 5 degrees north of the equator, the "slingshot" of the earth's rotation means that rockets use less fuel and is are better positioned to achieve geostationary (matching the Earth's rotation) orbits.
The three hour tour was entirely in French. We were the only non-French tourists on the bus, but we managed to follow most of the info the guides gave as we drove around the sprawling facility (it's probably about 50km x 20km). In any case the coolest stuff was just being there. Standing right next to (or even on!) the Soyuz launch pad and visiting the Ariane 5 launch control centre (where, on a Saturday afternoon, two of the three people at work were young women. Yay for female rocket scientists!)
A few cool CSG facts:
More than 50% of the world's telecommunications satellites have been launched from Kourour
Most of the facility is jungle and is a conservation area, complete with jaguars, tapirs and giant anteaters
Two days before every launch the French Foreign Legion combs the 100sqm of jungle surrounding the facility to make sure there's no one hiding out who might interfere with the launch
At every launch there is a team ready to self-destruct the rockets should they put the town of Kourou at risk. Imagine the stress of having to decide whether to destroy a USD200 million rocket (plus the cost of the satellites!) with literally no more than a second of decision making time.
7500 people are employed at or in servicing of the CSG, meaning that it employs fully 5% of French Guiana's entire population.
After the tour we did some grocery shopping. What with the fact that almost everything in FG is imported, eating there can be expensive. As such we self catered for our whole stay. This didn't mean we suffered though. In Kourou we bought three baguettes, some Emmenthal and Buche de Chevre and a bottle of 2011 Côtes du Rhone. Along with our veggies and tomato paste brought from Suriname, this made a delicious picnic dinner at the Pointe des Roches, sitting by the edge of the lighthouse on the very edge of Kourou town.
We also spent the night at Pointe des Roches. As we couldn't find a hammock spot, we ended up just parking across from the Hotel des Roches and spending a surprisingly restful night sleeping in Evee's pretty much fully reclining seats.
The next morning we were up for sunrise and looked out over the distant Iles des Saluts. These three islands, including the infamous Devil's Island were where the problem prisoners of the penal colony were sent including Albert Dreyfus and Henri "Papillon" Charriere. Incidentally I read Charriere's prison (and escape) story in Suriname and FG. It was a big distracting that much of it appears likely to be the stories of other prisoners rather than his own. But far worse was what an entitled, self-righteous git he was. For me at least it detracts tremendously from his story of the cruelty of the penal colony system and humanity's desire for freedom. Anyhow, enough editorial.
From Kourou we drove the 65km to Cayenne, French Guiana's capital. We skirted the city and headed straight for the Sentier Rorota, a well maintained 6km trail through some pretty wild jungle on the outskirts of town.
On a Sunday morning it was very busy, with dozens of people out walking (or mostly running) the trail for exercise. If this group was at all representative, FG's residents are a tremendously fit bunch!
There are a number of similar trails around FG, but our primary reason for visiting this one (aside from ease of access) was that it's meant to be daily easy to spot sloths there.
I'd been trying to temper Sarah's expectations for the previous couple of days, but she was still very excited at the prospect of spotting one. I'd begun to despair when after when after about 40 minutes of walking slowly, our heads tilted permanently upwards and necks beginning to kink, Sarah whisper-shouted "there's one!"
It was moving surprisingly quickly about 20 or 30m above us. We spent probably 20 minutes watching it make its way up one branch, change its mind, head back down, then out along another branch, then spend a while eating, then clamber (I'm not sure if you can call movement that slow "clambering" but aside from the speed it fits) over to another tree, til it finally disappeared from view in a thicker section of canopy.
Hooray! We'd seen a wild Mouton Parreseux! I love the fact that the French name for them is "lazy sheep," (often just abbreviated to "lazy").
Mission accomplished, we finished walking the trail and then went to have a bit more of a look around Cayenne.
We made a short stop at Plage Montjoly, a beach where at other times of year it's possible to see huge leatherback and other sea turtles coming ashore to nest.
We had a short driving tour of the city centre (though with a population of about 50,000 it's a bit of a stretch calling it a city). And found it to be incredibly boring. It's a bit unfair to judge it on a Sunday afternoon, but it may even have been quieter than Nieuw Nickerie in Suriname. The architecture was mostly pretty rough and unattractive and in the centre town virtually nothing was open.
We tried to find a supermarket on the outskirts of the city. This turned out to be an exercise in immense frustration, as we visited three and found that each one has closed a few minutes before we got there (at noon, 12:30 and 12:45). Nevertheless we eventually found a dairy and restocked our baguette, cheese and wine supplies and headed out to spend the afternoon on the grounds of small but pretty Fort Diamante near the mouth of the Cayenne River.
The fort was (surprise surprise) closed, but we still had a pleasant afternoon there picnicking before we drove to the Degrade de Cannes marina, a little further up river. There we watched everyone haul their boats out after a Sunday on the water.
We weathered a period just after sunset when we had to choose between being savaged by mosquitoes with the car windows open or baking in a sauna with them closed. But by 20:00 things were much more comfortable and we had another restful evening in Evee.
The next morning we headed back into town, dropped Evee off then walked into (let's give it its due) a busier and more lively central Cayenne to get a bus down to the Brazilian border.
The bus a mix of Europe and South America. Wait around til it's full to depart, but not too full, only one passenger per seat. Air conditioned, but with A/C that didn't work for about half of the trip. And it cost 30 Euro per person for the 180km trip.
The road south was good, but through some very empty land with no towns and very few junctions. Just thick jungle and the burnt out remains of cars that had been caught smuggling (people or drugs) and put to the torch in situ.
There is a bridge over the Oiapoque river between French Guiana and Brazil. It took almost ten years to open to traffic after it was completed (arguments between governments about who knows what). But apparently it's not used for passenger traffic anyway, and we were dropped off in the town of St. George d'Oyapok near the pirogue (motorized canoe) dock.
We spent a confusing hour or so trying to figure out how to get an exit stamp from French Guiana. Our bus driver (and some other people) insisted that we wouldn't need one. Others said the office was closed until 14:00, though we later realized they were talking about the Brazilian consulate. And a few more said that there was no French immigration office in town and that the only one was at the bridge, 5km or so upstream.
We were beginning to consider giving up and just leaving without a stamp when s car pulled up with two gendarmes inside who I recognized as being the guys who had checked everyone's ID 10km or so outside of town.
We asked them if THEY knew where immigration control was or where to get an exit stamp. "That's us!" they replied and bundled us into the back for a short ride up to their office during which they had an entertaining radio conversation where they explained to their HQ that they were acting as an international taxi service for a Kiwi and a Canadian.
It seemed like the people in town weren't the only ones who found our search for an exit stamp a bit unusual, as the officer at the border police station had to look around for a couple minutes to actually find the stamp, but after that it was a matter of seconds and a couple minutes more for the ride back to the pirogue dock that our gendarmes-amis offered us.
There was a boat with one passenger already aboard and about to leave for Brazil, so we hopped aboard. The trip is a wee bit pricey at 20 Reais per person, but it's not outrageous and is at a rate fixed by the motor-canoe operators guild, so that's cool with me.
The journey upriver to the town on Oiapoque on the Brazilian side is probably about 10km, and passes one colourful Brazilian village, the big cable-stayed international bridge and some very wild looking jungle. With all of this plus a breezy respite from the hot midday sun, this was my favourite of our recent riparian border crossings.
On arriving we climbed off the boat and back into Brazil, returning after a six week absence and excited for our return.
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