Thursday, the 12th of February. Surinam to French Guiana.
We had a 6 am start and a 2 1/2 hour journey to the border with French Guiana sharing a car with Eric. Once at the border David had a battle to fill in exit forms on his iPad which Shanette has not told us where necessary. It delayed the group 20 minutes or so, but the taxi driver was extremely helpful. We then got aboard a dugout canoe with about four other clients and crossed the 2 to 3 km wide river between the two countries.
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It was a breeze to enter French Guiana although a security dog did bark at me with my picnic breakfast which we had not eaten. We were met by Irving and told that there will be two Danes with us for the day who had decided to extend their stay by one night in the country so that they could see the launch of the Ariane 6 rocket. We proceeded in a van that took six, with just the five of us, to the nearby transportation camp where convicts from France were received in the country between the late 18th century and 1950s. This reminded us slightly of Auschwitz – same sort of entry gate and same sort of barrack blocks. We saw where the unfortunate convicts were guillotined, as apparently no guillotining in took place in France so they were sent all this way to be guillotined. There were on average 13 to 14 people guillotined a year.
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After this we drove to Kourou where the launch was due to take place at 13:45. We got there about 13.15 and were ushered into a café for lunch which left me disappointed as it was full of buffet hot plates and I had visions of a sophisticated French patisserie. Anyway once we put the food on our plate, we took the plate to some scales where it was weighed for charging - a novel occurrence for us
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We were then driven to the beach where we sat down on the rocks to await the launch. This was quite spectacular against a bright blue sky and when the rocket seemed far above us the noise then reached this. It rose high into the sky, pouring our a very impressive white vapour trail behind it.
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After the launch we were taken to the Atlantis Hotel where we stayed for the night. This was no luxury hotel but was quite adequate although somewhat ugly in appearance especially the swimming pool which was surrounded by concrete walls and was concrete itself – health & safety gone mad. We unpacked a little and then went down and sat in the lounge overlooking the pool. After awhile I had a swim and then came back and had an espresso coffee in the lounge overlooking the pool. Soon after five, we went out for a walk to the beach and this took about an hour and the beach was very pleasant. We walked back and we went down to the lounge and had two caipirinhas and a plate of charcuterie between us.
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We chatted to Eric for awhile on our way back to the room, to be ready for our 7 am start in the morning.
Friday, February 13 Kourou to Devils Island
We had a very rushed breakfast at 6:30 am. In order to get to our boat, we had to leave the hotel at 7 am for our trip to Devils Island. It was only a 10 minutes drive to the quay where the catamaran was situated and the catamaran did not depart till 8 am so we felt somewhat cheated. We had had to book out of the hotel as our itinerary told us that the next night would be in Cayenne. But talking to Eric we found that he was booked for two nights at the Atlantis Hotel and that we not only would have an hours extra drive after the Devils Island to get to Cayenne, but we would have to get up an hour earlier and leave Cayenne at 6:30 am, this probably meaning no breakfast, in order to get back to Koulou to pick Eric up at 7:30 am: it all seemed somewhat crazy so we asked our driver if he could contact the agency to see if we could change our booking to another night at the Atlantis.
About 25 of us boarded the catamaran with Skipper Tony being in charge. He was a very large man who looked a bit like a pirate. Then followed a 90 minute crossing to the Royal Isle, the last 40 minutes of this being quite rough and at least 10 of the passengers succumbed to seasickness so there was this somewhat stomach churning scene of buckets being proffered and then changed by the two crew members of the ship. A coloured passenger actually turned white as he was continually sick.
We were on Devils Island before off a P&O Cruise ship in 2003
Dreyfus on Devil's Island
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Once at Isle Royale we disembarked with our guide, and Eric, and had a walk round the island seeing where the convicts were locked up and many beautiful sandy beaches but with very rough seas. Also a couple of turtles. There were far more buildings on the island than I had envisaged and there was a large hotel of some 50 rooms. We eventually stopped at this and had a beer by about 10.30 but for some reason our guide did not give our lunch order till 12.15, which resulted in us missing out on the pudding, a fresh fruit salad, which I was really looking forward to. The starter, crudités, was excellent, but the pork chop was so tough to be almost inedible.
So at 1:10 pm we had to abandon the restaurant area and beat our way back to the boat. We were the last to board it. Then a short traverse to Saint Joseph's Island where the catamaran anchored and we were then transferred to shore by a very small zodiac which only took four passengers and two crew. It therefore took 6 trips to get us all ashore. Once ashore we did a 45 minute tour round 3/4 of the island and up to the top where the main prison was located. Very few of the convicts sent here ever managed to make it back to France.
At 3:30 pm we were transferred back to the catamaran and all aboard by 4 pm but it then took over 100 minutes to get back to Kourou. We had initially been told that we could change our booking back to the Atlantis for the night if we paid the cost of cancellation of the Cayenne hotel. We told Irwin to tell Shanette that we were very angry and declined to pay for their error. And by about 2 pm we heard that we could indeed return to Atlantis without paying. Just before landing back in Kourou, David had a phone call from Shanette who tried to dig herself further into her hole and tell us that we were being unreasonable and did not seem to realise that the fact that they had changed Eric‘s booking for two nights to the Atlantis, but that they had not realised that they should have changed us too
Once back at the hotel where we were assigned the same room as the previous night, one of the only few that did not have a balcony, we sorted ourselves out and then went down to the bar lounge area and had two Caipirinha's and a plate of smoked salmon.
Saturday, February 14. Cayenne to Paris and Valencia
We had breakfast before eight and packed up for hour trip home. We were picked up at 9am by Mike and taken 10 minutes to the Space Centre where we met up with our guide. We saw full size exhibits of the rockets they have launched from here. We then went inside and saw an exhibition and various films and had our photo taken against the background of a rocket launching.
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All this took less than an hour and we were on our way to Cayenne. An hour later we met our guide and had an hours walk round the town: there was not really that much to see. Eric decided he did not want to tour the city. Then to a very, very nice restaurant with loads of charm and ordered their meal for the day which was duck with the pepper sauce. A salad for me, chips for David (who did not eat too many of them at all). Neither of us could eat a huge duck breast and so we brought the rest of it back in aluminium foil. I then had a coffee and David had a crème brûlée which was very good complete with real vanilla seeds.
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We were picked up at 2 pm by Mike, to be driven to the airport. Here we had to go first through extra security to enter enter as apparently there’s a lot of drugs traffic here. A local tourist board researcher did a survey with us on tourist habits. We have never had such a senseless survey before but she was very sweet and we had time to kill.
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We were sitting on the designated old peoples chairs, when we were told that we could not be here unless we needed assistance. I pointed out the sign but the man insisted we were only entitled to be here if we needed assistance. So we said right we’ll have some assistance. They let us stay in those seats but we never got any assistance.
Due to David's astuteness, we had an extra empty seat beside us. And enjoyed a Poire William. A roughly a 10 hour flight to Paris and then only a couple of hours to wait before going onward to Valencia and hopefully being home before 2 pm.
A really interesting holiday yet we had struggled almost daily with innumerable problems about the schedule.