Trip Report: French Guiana
Visited in November 2023
This article is part of a three-chapter series on my trip to the Guianas. This is the third chapter and for a better understanding it is worth start with the Guyana trip report.
Quick quiz question: with which country does France have the longest land border? The answer is Brazil. Did you know? A tricky question, the answer to which probably baffles most people. But the truth is, France’s longest border is not in Europe.
The reason for this is French Guiana, a French overseas territory. France is the only country in the world whose territory stretches across five continents. Asia and obviously Antarctica are the only continents without French territory. French Guiana is the French territory in South America.
After visiting British Guiana (Guyana) and Dutch Guiana (Suriname) on this trip, the French counterpart was my last stop. Unlike French Guiana, however, Guyana and Suriname are now independent countries that have separated themselves from their colonial powers.
I took a shared cab from Suriname to the border in the town of Albina. The journey took two hours and you can find the contact details in the Suriname trip report. Afterwards, a ferry costing €5 took us across the river that forms the natural border between Suriname and French Guiana.
Crossing the border in French Guiana was kind of weird. I think I could have just walked past the little border house, nobody would have said anything. The border between Suriname and French Guiana is poorly protected. Besides, my identity card would probably have been enough to enter French Guiana. However, I wanted to avoid any possible trouble and got the stamp in my passport.
And so I was in France and even in the EU, because French Guiana is part of the European Union. To be more precise, French Guiana is even the largest outermost region of the EU. And it’s 7,500 kilometers away from the European continent. As I said, it felt kind of strange.
Anyone coming to French Guiana from Suriname will find themselves in the third largest city, Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. Theoretically, you can visit this city as a day trip from Paramaribo, which is particularly worthwhile for those who have to fly from the Guianas to the United States. For me, however, I continued on to Kourou, where the country’s two main attractions are located. Besides, my flight back from the Guianas was from Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana.
I would like to describe here how to get from Saint-Laurent to Kourou by bus. After all, you can hardly find any information about this on the internet. Ideally, you should rent a car for the whole time in French Guiana. More on this later. If, like me, you prefer to travel by public transport, you can also take the bus. The T.I.G. Ligne 7 supposedly departs at 1pm from the bus station near the Transportation Camp. There are also supposed to be shared cabs in the parking lot of the big market.
However, I cannot confirm this. In my case, there was no need to look for a bus or shared cab, because the day before I had met French people who live in French Guiana and they offered me a ride with them from Paramaribo to Kourou. So I first drove with them to the border and when we got to Saint-Laurent, they dropped me off at a restaurant while they picked up their car from home.
Around two hours in the late afternoon, I reached my apartment in Kourou. French Guiana is often referred to as the First World, but this neighborhood didn’t look like it. It looked kind of run-down with stray dogs and it didn’t make a safe impression either. My host, whom I never met in person during my stay, wrote to me on WhatsApp that I could walk around in the evening, but should always avoid dark streets.
During my time in Kourou, I followed these recommendations and I had no incidents. I didn’t have any problems during the day anyway and at night I didn’t leave the main street and found stores and restaurants there. The only unpleasant situation occurred in the afternoon when a transvestite on a bicycle approached me and followed me around for a while.
However, it was also a bit of a problem that I didn’t have a car. French Guiana is a place where somehow everyone seems to have a vehicle and public transportation doesn’t seem to be a big deal. For this reason, I moved around on foot most of the time and focused on places in the surrounding area. It’s also not like you see many cabs on the streets.
Other things I noticed: in contrast to the other two Guianas, practically nobody speaks English in French Guiana. Besides, it was unbearably hot, just like in Guyana and Suriname. Was French Guiana more developed than the other Guianas? Honestly, I can’t say but maybe a little bit (especially compared to Guyana).
The next day, I joined a tour to the Îles du Salut. Just like in Georgetown and Paramaribo, it wasn’t quite as easy to find a tour. It took several emails with different providers before I found a catamaran with a free seat. In the end, I went with Tony’C Boat. The captain even spoke a bit of English.
So, what are the Îles du Salut? French Guiana was the French penal colony from the 19th to the 20th century. Far away from home, criminals, but also dissidents or Jews, for example, were imprisoned on the three islands that were part of this tour. Anyone who has heard of the movie Papillon may have come into contact with French Guiana. The movie plays here.
You can visit two of the three islands on an Îles du Salut tour. However, the infamous Devil’s Island is not open to the public, so the boat simply passes close by and you can take photos. The excursion takes a whole day and costs around €50. The journey from Kourou to the islands and back takes an hour.
You can then move around freely on the islands and visit the remains of the prison camp. A guide is not necessary as there some signs on the island with descriptions. This means you can explore the islands on your own and those who want to can also go swimming at some sections. The Salvation Islands were also the first place in the Guianas that seemed a bit tropical or like paradise. Finally, the water was a beautiful blue and not the ugly brown everywhere I went before.
On the islands, you learn about the harsh living conditions of the prisoners. They had to work under sometimes inhumane conditions. They earned a few cents, which they could use to buy rotten food. Around half of the prisoners did not survive the first year. They died from malnutrition, the hard labor or violence from the guards and/or other prisoners.
A few lucky prisoners were able to escape. But that was the absolute exception. The islands were far from the mainland. There were also sharks in the waters, and the guards attracted them. In the slaughterhouse, the blood of the slaughtered pigs was let to flow into the sea every day to keep the predators nearby.
In addition to the story of the penal colony, the Salvation Islands also contain interesting wildlife. I saw monkeys and, for the first time in my life, agoutis, a kind of oversized red squirrel. I also saw lots of lizards and birds.
What I can advise against is the (only) restaurant on Royal Island, the first island you visit. The food is average at best, but costs €29 without a drink, which is quite a rip-off. That’s why I would take my own food to the island. However, the Auberge (the restaurant) is good for a drink and also offers a good view.
By the way, the second island, St. Joseph Island, doesn’t have a restaurant or anywhere else to buy anything to eat or drink. Just so you know, because you also have to stay there for about two hours.
To summarize, the Îles du Salut was a pretty cool dark tourism tour. The day offers an interesting history lesson and the islands are probably the most beautiful place I’ve seen in the Guianas. If you can’t make it to Kourou and are only visiting French Guiana as a day trip from Paramaribo, for example, you can visit the Transportation Camp in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. All new prisoners from Europe came to this camp before they were sent to the Salvation Islands.
The next day, another highlight was on the program. The European Space Center is located in French Guiana, more precisely in Kourou, and you can visit it as a tourist. There are free tours, but you have to register by email at least two days in advance. Regular rocket launches actually take place from this spaceport. The launch of the Ariane 6 rocket is planned for 2024.
What some may know is the replica of the Ariane 5 rocket that stands in the parking lot of the Space Center. This is where most of the photos of this place that you find on social media are taken. To visit this place, you don’t need a permit or registration. It is open to the public and you can just show up.
I imagined that I would enter some building and spend three hours learning about the Space Center. How naive I was. In fact, it was a bus tour covering a huge area. 98% of French Guiana is rainforest. Of the remaining 2%, the Space Center takes up a quarter of the area. Therefore, it took a long time to get from one place to the next on this area.
However, we saw some very interesting things, including the launch pad. It’s really cool to see something like that up close. By the way, you can take photos of most of the area. There was once a building where you could not for confidentiality reasons, but the guides point this out.
What was a bit stupid was that I signed up for an English tour. In fact, I was on the tour with about 39 other people and I was the only non-French person. So, the tour was in French and I understood maybe half of it, which is why I didn’t complain. If you don’t speak French (good luck in French Guiana!) I would double check that the tour is in English.
The Space Center was definitely a cool experience and one of the top highlights of the Guianas. For me, it was also the last activity on my trip. I then took a cab from the Space Center (with a stop at my apartment) to the airport in Matoury, right next to the capital Cayenne. It cost me €100, but there would have been shared cabs or buses from Kourou to Cayenne for €40.
However, that was a little too risky for me, since I read that the shared taxis often have a delay and I did not want to miss my flight. The Space Center tour was only available on the day of my departure, so I took a private cab straight afterwards. If you are looking for a driver within Kourou or from Kourou to the airport, you can contact my driver, whose name I don’t know, via Whatsapp (+33769742545).
Is French Guiana worth a trip? I spent a little over 48 hours in the country and actually found this duration to be just right. The Îles du Salut and the Space Center were two exciting tours, but apart from that I don’t feel like I missed anything. I can certainly live with the fact that I didn’t see the Transportation Camp in Saint-Laurent.
All in all, this week in the Guianas was okay. But perhaps also the most unspectacular trip in 2023 and I’m glad that I added New York to this itinerary, which was certainly the highlight of this trip. Would I travel to the Guianas a second time? I think I can almost certainly rule that out at this point. I saw what I wanted to see and I don’t really need to go back a second time.
Overall, I found the Guianas expensive and sometimes a little boring for a solo traveler. It was also not easy to plan and energy-sapping sometimes. So that would be one last recommendation from me, find someone to go with you when you visit these countries.
Click here to find the trip reports of the 170+ other countries I have visited so far!
I’m glad I read your trip reports to this part of the world since I’ll be there at the end of the month! 😅