The first part of my summer holiday was a visit to French Guiana. I was hoping to spend a long weekend seeing as much of the country as possible. Well I tried but couldn’t do
some of the stuff on my list because of the price. It was way too expensive to do pretty much anything in this country. They use the Euros, I was used to European prices
but because they didn't have a public transport infrastructure it just cost the earth to go anywhere. So if you wanted to explore the country on your own, you would either have to drive or take a taxi. My trip to the nearby town of Kourou to visit the famous Salvation Islands and the Space Centre would cost me 100 Euros each way, bloody French people and their Euros. Apart from the expense I thoroughly enjoyed my trip. Even better was there were no tourists as such because the place was full of French people and no one else. I felt like I was in France but back in the 60s in an old coastal town. No buildings or high rises, I think two floors was the maximum. The colonial houses were so pretty and colourful except for the ones falling apart although there were people still living in those as well. My first day in Cayenne was spent wandering around the old city. I must have had an ancient guide book as a couple of their suggestions for walks were quite impossible. Firstly they talked about the fort and how it sits on top of a hill and to walk up the hill to enjoy the nice views of the city. What the book didn’t tell me was that the French Foreign Legion had moved in recently and took over the fort and
basically refused entry to any non military personnel. Don’t get me wrong I tried to get to it and I persevered but they were pretty adamant that I was not allowed anywhere
near the place. The other suggestion was to walk up to the little park over looking the ocean. Well it obviously was years ago when the last ocean view was ever seen. When I got
to the park…quite plan park with a few benches, the only view I got was of the under growth and small bushes. I couldn’t even hear the ocean let alone see it. I’m not good at reading maps and I get it wrong most times but I asked people directions. I definitely wasn’t in the wrong place. While I pottered about the town I saw posters for a masked carnival that was taking place in the evening so decided to check it out. After my 5th shower of the day I headed to the carnival and waited absolutely ages before anything happened. It was a mini carnival, just the right size as I hate crowds.
The next day I went on a hunt for the cheapest most friendliest looking taxi driver I could find at 6.00am on a Sunday morning – I settled for a guy who didn’t speak
any English but looked like Dennis Haysbert (he played the president in the TV series 24) so this kind of made me feel safe…Crazy I know! I headed to Kourou to catch the
catamaran to the Salvation Islands. I’ve heard about the islands in particular Devil’s Island where the famous book Papillion was based upon. These islands were used as penal
colonies for the French convicts and the most famous of convicts is Dreyfuss who apparently was wrongly imprisoned for treason. He tried to escape numerous times but never
managed it. You must read the book or at least watch the film; Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman are in it. I was so looking forward to exploring Devil’s Island but those
pesky Foreign Legion again had taken it over and is using the island to launch rockets for the space centre. I landed on the island at approximately 10am and by 11.15am I had covered the entire island. My boat was picking me up at 6.30pm, 7 hours to go, suddenly I felt like a prisoner myself. I tried to get off the island before my pick up by
boarding whatever boats that docked but in the end I kept ending back on the main island. I couldn’t get off the damn thing. So I had to entertain myself for the next few
hours. I found some monkeys to play with, turtles swimming in the sea, had long lunch at the cemetary and even nearly stepped on a baby snake. I must have covered every inch of
that island all the while watching up above for falling coconuts. Two missed me by a few inches, scared the crap out of me. By the end of the day I had a crick in my neck from
looking up all the time. The thought of death by coconut didn’t appeal to me. I saw several danger signs for falling rocks but not one for falling coconuts.
The catamaran finally arrived followed by a huge storm. The journey back to the main land was quite harrowing; huge waves, thunder and lightning and lots of frightened French
people. They were screaming, throwing up, falling all over the place, what a bunch of wimps…it was a nightmare. I sat in the middle of the boat with my ipod on full blast to
drown out (no pun intended) the retching sounds. I wrote a message on my arm just in case I died on this damn trip to make sure whoever it was that found my body knew that I
wasn’t French.
As luck would have it, we arrived at the port, a little dishevelled and covered in vomit but alive. I ran out of there as fast as I could leaving a hundred sickly looking
frenchies in my dust. I forgot that the captain had to open the gates for us to leave and enter the harbour. When I got to the exit it was locked. My taxi driver Jacques, the
Dennis Haysbert look alike met me at the exit; he pointed to a hole in the fence, a very small hole and gestured for me to go through it. Reluctantly I agreed, I threw my bag up to him and got on my belly and crawled through the fence swearing my head off and scratching my legs in the process. But I was free at last. He asked me if I still wanted to go to Mont Joly beach to search for leatherback turtles, because it was nearly 10pm and I looked like hell. I said yes with enthusiasm and I’m so glad I did. It took us awhile to finally find a turtle, in the dark with only his iphone and my tiny torch for light. Not only that, we found two baby turtles as well. I nearly stepped on one of them. It was so dark and I was so impressed by my taxi driver…not a nature guide whatsoever just a taxi driver who put up with my crappy GCSE French. He knew where they were by instinct. Unfortunately the baby turtles were determined to go in the opposite direction of the sea and headed for the hungry stray dogs. We quickly tried to catch them… they were fast. We picked up one each and put them down on the beach as close to the sea as possible. What did they do? They headed straight for the dogs again like they were on some death wish. They were so quick it took ages trying to catch them. Eventually after three attempts they finally followed their mum into the sea. We rescued them from the dogs…I was so chuffed.
Another trip on my list was a visit to the Space Centre, the only other space station outside of the US (Kennedy Space Centre). But you had to book in advance for any visit and
since I arrived on a Friday when it was closed all weekend it was pretty much impossible to book a tour for the Monday. I resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t be going. So I
settled for a relaxing morning before my flight. But I heard the owner of my apartment managed to get my name on some list. But she only got the call at noon from her mate who
worked at the centre. By the time I got Jacques to come get me and head back into Kourou again it was another two hours and we were really cutting it fine. My flight was at 7pm and the tour lasted three hours. I went for it anyway as I really hate missing out on things. It was a two hour round trip to the centre, an hour’s wait and a three hour tour.
I just managed to get to the airport and check in just before they closed the desk for my flight back to Brazil. If I had missed my plane I’m sure my fab taxi driver who was
so generous with his time would have driven me to Brazil but I would dread to think what the cost would have been even with all the discounts he offered.
