French Guiana

 It has been an interesting couple of days in this slice of France, the place with the highest per capita income in South America and, who knew, the toughest Internet access at least for us. 

We left Paramaribo around 10:30 Monday morning with about a two and a half hour drive along the coast of Suriname, on the only road south to the ferry at Albina. As always the highway passed through jungle and savanna, a few villages and with not even a glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean. If you come to the Guyanas don’t expect any beaches or waterfront accommodations. 

It was a fundamentally boring drive on a well paved road driving of course on the left - I haven’t reversed the photo! 

The further we got from the capital, the more profound the poverty. The only breaks we saw in the jungle were wooden shacks with neat little gardens as usual, but not the sort of middle class housing we saw in Paramaribo.  We sailed through the police checkpoint as no one wants to deal with the complexities of a foreign vehicle. 

It was evident this end of the country is the poorer part of Suriname. 

Albina, the port town at the end of the road was dusty and decrepit and I was all taken trying to find the ferry terminal instead of photographing the poverty. We found the terminal but the gates were closed and there was no signage and I thought Google Maps had it wrong so I was looking for other possibilities when Layne said she saw a man coming. Indeed he opened the gates, showed us our place in line and where to get stamped out of Suriname. From the inside looking out: 

Then we sat in line for about half an hour under the blazing sun waiting for La Gabrielle, the ancient ferry to chug over from St Laurent to pick us up. It was too hot for Rusty to go outside and no one even asked about him so his $165 government export permit languished unused in our document folder. 

The Bac La Gabrielle is not a large ferry and is long overdue for replacement but the French government for whatever reason won’t license the bigger and newer “Le Malani” ferry to take its place. So we all had to squeeze on to this little boat for the thirty minute ride across two miles of water.

I dislike ferries as they are generally an interruption in the smooth flow of traffic that would flow over a bridge but this ferry is totally French, running weird unpredictable hours that change daily and it never ever runs on weekends. Half the crew was white and it felt more like Brittany in a heatwave than equatorial South America as I watched the captain nudge us all onboard, seen here in my wing mirror. 

The landing on the other side was easy compared to some ferries we have had to ride and I paused to let the locals get ahead while I took a picture. 

French Guiana is an overseas department of France, number 973 on the license plates. Think of it as being similar to the “Commonwealth” of Puerto Rico. If you are born here you are French, the laws and customs here are as French as in the Île de France wherein resides Paris. Statistically it’s the richest territory in South America and the smallest with a population of 300,000. It is one seventh the size of Metropolitan France and the land border with Brazil is France’s longest such border. It is also hellaciously expensive here though we did find some cheap-ish cheese. Gasoline is $8:27 a gallon and diesel is $7:60 though from the amount of traffic you would think they were giving it away for free. We’ve been in more traffic jams in two days than the previous six months. That below is the “Malani” waiting to be put into service:

The entry procedure was ridiculously simple. If you are an EU citizen you get to stay with no limitations (except your budget) and European car insurance works here too. We handed our passports over to a black police officer in his office from which he never exited. He told us to talk to customs, two young enthusiastic white men who enjoyed practicing their English. They asked me for my passport and I gave a Gallic shrug and said he has them. There ensued the weirdest interaction. The police officer snarled at the customs men who retreated and asked us to wait. Meanwhile they were debating the value of a car gifted to the driver who was not a diplomat but had diplomatic plates on his green Range Rover. I listened to the debate but missed the ending as our passports appeared and we paid 95 Euros (about $110) for two weeks car insurance. That was the only transaction we did with the friendly customs guys. No temporary import permit or other car related paperwork. 

We then paid, in all the confusion 43 Euros for the ferry ride, almost $50 and the customs guys asked if we had alcohol and I said one can of Guinness; they laughed.  One asked if I was a Republican or a Democrat and I just said I was traveling which made him laugh. The other customs agent said gloomily there are lots of Venezuelans and Haitians here and I got the impression they like President Trump’s anti immigrant rhetoric, and we’ve seen a lot of similar sentiments from European overlanders. 

No one looked at Rusty or cared to see his vaccination passport or anything. So as soon as we had our insurance from Customs who didn’t inspect our van other than a quick license plate check, we drove out into France. Or at least into Saint Laurent du Maroní, St Lawrence on the Maroni River.  Like Albina in the other side this town reeked of poverty and border blues so we drove through electing not to stop.

Besides which impression every single restaurant in town was closed on a Monday. A few had been open in the morning but we landed at 2 pm and got on the street around 3:00pm and there was no food to be had. We ate cashews from our stash from the Tulip supermarket in distant Paramaribo and got on Route National 1 to Cayenne 150 miles away.

St Laurent du Maroni. 

I thought the cemeteries in Suriname were weird with jumbled plots and graves made of bath tiles so I was glad to see they look more like what I’m used to, here in tropical France:

For the next two hours we drove through jungle on a decently paved road, mostly, and saw no signs of human life, no houses, no villages, no nothing. 

The road dipped on small hills unlike anything we saw in Suriname but it was all jungle all the time. 

And we were of course back to driving on the right. 

I waved to the man in the picture below as we drove past, and he stared at me with the sort of cold dead stare that gave me a shiver down my spine. He was probably just surprised by the unusual gesture but his stolid mahogany colored face looked pissed.  It was a nothing moment that impressed itself on my mind in this particular place of no signs of human habitation. 

Iracoubo was the first village we passed through and there was not much there. This is rural France far off the beaten track. 

A new bridge is being built with a traffic light to control traffic. Haven’t seen that in a long time! Usually we just go and hope for the best. Vive la France!

And unlike Suriname where there is absolutely no signage on the highways there is an abundance here.

There are also picnic areas along the highway and modest parking pull outs which you don’t see in many countries. 

The sun was at a bad angle but in this photo you can see a paved parking lot for a picnic area. 

The tiki huts are called carbets (“car-bays”) in French Guiana and we could have spent the night there wild camping had we chosen. 

There are no facilities other than trash cans but it’s the sort of public spaces we haven’t seen since Chile. 

Oh and the right of way is clearly and frequently marked here by the European yellow diamond. 

Our plan was to have a late lunch or early dinner in Sinnamary, a small town off Highway 1. The turn off was properly signposted of course. 

It turned out to be a pretty little town but of course the restaurant with the great reviews was closed on Mondays. 

It seemed like the whole town was closed at five pm on a Monday. 

Nothing daunted, Layne had spotted a food tent near the church  and we turned back after Rusty got a walk. I went along to interpret but the lady selling the food grew up in Guyana and spoke English. 

We got two orders of bami (Indonesian noodles) with chicken at 9 Euros ($11) each.  It was a delicious dinner. 

I had seen a trail head behind the town up Departmental Highway 7, la route de l’anse- the road to the beach.

And that was where we spent the night. The trail head had a parking lot as  I had hoped but the trail itself was closed owing to the planned launch of a rocket from the space center so we parked and had our dinner. 

The Tuesday rocket launch was why we came to French Guyana on Monday and we were glad to see it. 

But that was on Tuesday in Kourou, another action packed day on the road in France.