Landing on a beautiful island with a sad history, a quick glance into French Guiana’s space centre, hiking in rain forests with killer bees, still looking for caimans and other animals and enjoying French cheese.
Les Îles du Salut
After 3 days of rather unpleasant sailing, we drop our anchor in clear water (YES!) – well… clearer than in the rivers anyway, and it was night, so we only saw the state of the water in the morning. The Salvation islands lie just off the coast of French Guiana close to Kourou. The bay of the biggest island, île Royale, is rimmed with palm trees and a few other boats are already anchored. All three islands are full of vegetation. Stunningly beautiful!
On shore, accompanied by monkeys and agoutis, we stroll around without a clear plan and climb to the top to see the famous penal colony of Cayenne (also known as the Bagnes). The prisons – in function as such for over 100 years until 1953 detaining France’s worst criminals – were known for the staff’s harsh treatment of prisoners and diseases that contributed to high mortality. Despite the gruesome history of the place, it is all very interesting.
Another day, we enjoy meeting up with other sailing families for a birthday picnic and ball games on the helicopter landing place. An afternoon full of laughter and exchanges.
Sailing from Brazil to French Guiana 20 – 30 miles off the coast, the water is only 10 to 20 metres deep and just as muddy as in the rivers!! 
This little chap has been with us for quite a while. We hope he’s very hungry and eats all the ants and mosquitos. 
When the first thing you see coming out into the cockpit is this, you forget about the unpleasant parts! 
Monkey business! They are present all over the island and don’t hesitate to come close to see if you have any peanuts. 
The adorable agoutis are rather shy, but the’re many of them. 
The guard’s quarters at the prison. Their living conditions were extremely comfortable. The guards lived there with their families. 
Except for the prisoners and the guards, nobody lived on the islands. 
The single, dark cells in one of the buildings. 
The hospital of the Bagne. We couldn’t go inside. 
Different styles of cells for different types of detention… 
Stunning sunset from the boat at the Salvation Islands 
Léo’s birthday on the helicopter landing place beside the Prison, with the crews from Touka and Lady Banana. 
Another commun species on the island: the green iguana. 
The neighbouring island of Ile Royale: Ile Saint-Joseph with more detention cells. 
From shore, the view onto the anchorage at Ile Royale
River anchorage
Marked river channels are normally dredged regularly from silting up, so that the big ships can come in and out of the rivers. Hence, there should not really be a question with our draught of 1,8 m and we deliberately leave at mid rising tide. But suddenly between the lateral buoys no 7 and 8 we have zero cm below the keel and Illika is moving very slowly even though we don’t change the speed… The ground is so muddy, that we’re probably just pushing through the top loose layer of mud. By now we should be used to things like that, but I tell you, it’s not reassuring!
In the Kourou river there are quite a few sailing boats anchored and as the currents are quite strong, we are advised to leave a lot of space between the yachts spinning around with the tide changing and to let down 40 metres of chain, even if the depth is only about 5 metres. We do as told.
Kourou
The town itself is strikingly unspectacular, except for a very nice bookshop and some trendy, but rather unlively restaurants (due to price or season?) along the beach road. The colourful fruit and vegetable market is also largely overpriced, so we find ourselves buying French cheese -we were tempted to buy the Swiss one also on display! -, Belgium beer, Irish butter, Spanish melons and Brazilian avocadoes in Super-U! Shame on us, but there are very few local products. And anyway, everything is surprisingly expensive. Except if you’re crazy about igname or maniok of course.
French Guiana’s Space Centre
We reserve our place a couple of days in advance and follow all the security instruction as indicated. Otherwise, you’re not allowed in. A very rainy guided tour brings us through the Space Centre and on the launching ground of Ariane 5. It is a very cool thing to do and not only the boys loved it. Unfortunately, in the pouring rain, photos don’t look the same: we hardly take any!
Sailing into the Kourou river, you need to follow the marked channel for miles. Like all over the American continent, the colours for the channels are reversed: inbound, red is on starboard, green on port. 
0 metres below our keel… a little worrying. 
The space centre in Kourou is one of the most visited attractions in French Guiana. Here the Ariane 5 launching platform. 
The guided tour brought us to the command centre. 
It rained all day! 
And on many of the following days. 
It was worth building up a water-recuperation system. The boys collected over 200 litres of fresh water in 1 day. 
When the sun doesn’t shine, sailors are happy to wash and dry the laundry in a “laverie”. The boys are getting good at folding laundry 😉
Jungle hikes
Monkey mountain is a 4 hour quite challenging hike up a hill close to Kourou which we enjoyed like any of our hikes in the rain forest. Justification for the name of the mountain was, in our case, not done. But we had that on another hike south of Cayenne: monkeys up in the trees just above our heads. We didn’t like being attacked by aggressive bees though when walking past their hive (that we hadn’t seen). Quite scary! And we have never seen anybody jump so high and far as Oliver and Alexander. Comical now to think back, but not so funny then: all of us have stings, but fortunately the itching and swelling is gone in the next days.
Lots of animals
The zoo is of course an easier way to see the animals of the region. Maybe one cannot be as proud of having seen them, but at least you can take your time to look at them properly and close up, with all the information about them on a panel – if you speak French, that is. The Guyana zoo is a pretty zoo with only the amazonian animals and a jungle trail over hanging bridges. We really enjoyed it and got to see jaguars, tapirs, anteaters, monkeys, ibises, capybaras and many others up close.
Beware: mosquitos!
Like in all the countries we have been travelling these last months we do our best not to get too many bites for preventing malaria, dengue, yellow fever, infections etc. One day, with our rented car, we drive to the most northern tip of French Guiana. One of the reasons, we would like to see turtles that come nesting on those beaches during this season. As it’s either raining or very hot, we’re driving with the air conditioning on, and the windows closed.
Along the road we see an information board about the turtles as well as a detailed map. Happy about this extra info, we stop the car, Jean-Luc and I get out, the boys stay seated. They both start screaming at us to close the doors. First, we don’t realize why they’re kicking up such a fuss, but it doesn’t take long to realize that the car, our clothes and hair and every little bit of free skin is getting attacked by mosquitos. No time to analyse the map, we leap back into the car and slam the doors. We start a mosi-battle in the car that takes good 10 minutes. It must have looked hilarious from the outside!
A few hundred metres further, at the beach, we make a second attempt to leave the car. This time no problem.
The Atlantic beaches in French Guiana are known for the turtle nesting. We didn’t see any traces that day though. 
During our hikes we see a lot of special plants, mushrooms, beetles, spiders, … 
South of Cayenne we did a great hike called the Rorota Trail. Beautiful vegetation, waterfalls, monkeys and killer bees! 
In the zoo where only the indiginous animals are shown, we finally saw caimans and capybaras! 
… as well as red faced spider monkeys… 
… and a couple of Tapir. 
Within the zoo, a trail over hanging bridges. 
We had a long talk with a local craftsman, who makes nice bowls out of fresh calabashes. 
The caramel coloured sand in the South makes this region very beautiful.
Cayenne and chilli peppers
Our two-day tour with a rented car up north brought us to Saint-Laurent du Maroni, the bordering river to Surinam. The main penal colony was based in this town and is the most famous former prison in French Guiana. It’s where the writer of “Papillon” was jailed. After all the horrible stories our guide in the prison tells us, the joyful market of Saint-Laurent is a nice distraction. We discover sweet rambutans, delicious giant pomelos and finally buy some fresh (not Cayenne! but) “coffee” chilli peppers. Very spicy!
We also spend a pleasant day in Cayenne but can’t say that the town struck us as mythical as its name sounds. After a quick look at the former fortress with a lot of open-air information about the slave trade, we spend quite some time in a little nature historical museum that is, as many things we visit, only interesting if you’re at ease with the French language…
Wrecked cars
There’s not much more to say about French Guiana except for one striking thing. We don’t really understand why we see so many, and we mean MANY, car wrecks on the side of the road or in the ditch. They are clearly the result of accidents as often they’re on the roof or on their side. Is it due to the people driving like lunatics or because they drink too much and decide to abandon ship before the police arrives? Or is it just because it’s too expensive to clear the cars away after the accident? Puzzlement. On the 200 km between Kourou and Saint-Laurent du Maroni we counted 52 abandoned cars.
Welcome to Cayenne. With Touka’s Team and Orion we spend an afternoon in Cayenne sightseeing. 
Some beautiful buildings have been restored, but there is still a lot to do, to make the city attractive for visitors. 
Outside the nature museum, our favourite animal in French Guiana. 
Any colour allowed! 
This time in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, the main detention centre for French prisoners. In the middle there used to be the guillotine. 
Most prisoners didn’t stay in Saint-Laurent long, but got sent to other “bagnes” like the one on Salvation Island. 
In one of the museums in French Guiana we found a series of moving paintings, all painted by the same artist, who had painted all situations in the Bagnes. 
Our lady guide had a few stories to tell us. Alexander tested the “confort”. 
Another painting of the conditions in the prisons. 
Papillon was jailed here. 
The joyful market in Saint-Laurent was appreciated 
We didn’t know all fruit and vegetables sold, and the sellers were happy to give us lots of explanations. 
It wasn’t easy to find the famous Cayenne pepper, but we bought some of these very spicy “coffee-peppers”, named after their look. 
Rambutan were a wonderful discovery for us. Similar to leechees, but nicer! 
We went to Saint-Laurent by car, so never tested the anchorage. But it looked nice. The “island” in the picture is in fact a overgrown boat wreck. 
Accident cars don’t seem to get cleared away very often in French Guiana… 
They become habitats for vegetation, mice and insects… 
… and happily rust away.
French and Dutch charms
We had planned to stay in French Guiana for about a week. It is difficult to make quick stops, we have realized this before. Two weeks have passed when we set sail. Looking for cultural differences we can’t wait to get to Surinam. Two days of sailing should bring us there.
Danke!
The bees and mosquitoes sound very very annoying! Looking forward to reading about Suriname (as we can fly there from Norwich!)
As always, so interesting, with horrible historical facts brought to mind. Maybe should read Papillon again. I’m sure the boys must have been horrified.
So much, good and bad, for them to take in, for you both as well. Wonderful.
xxxx
great reading. very interesting