I only stayed in Macapa for a couple of hours before I headed for the border to French Guiana. Just as in Sartarem, the onwards ticket was more expensive than my wallett could manage. Luckily they knocked a couple of reales of the ticket and I found myself on the 10-hour journey towards the border, Oipaque. The road was horrible and the rain even worse. This terrific combination resulted in the bus-ride taking 26 hours, instead of 10.. At one point I actually had to leave the bus with all my luggage and walk hundreds of meters in kneehigh mud. On top of it all, I had no money, no food and no water. Really not the best bus-ride I've had in South America so far..
Oipaque is a dirty, noisy little town with drugs and prostitution out in the open. But they had a relatively cheap bed for me there, an ATM, food and water, so I was pretty pleased on arrival. I also finally met some spanish - speaking people, which was a big relief, and they invited me to a birthday-party the day after, with homecoocked ceviche and campari!
As fiestas are in Brasil, they were going for an early start and were supposed to last all day. I met up with the Peruvian guys at 11 AM for campari, an Italian drink, and ceviche, Peruvian seafood. I had a campari with them and just strolled down to an IT-cafe down the road to sort out my money-situation. When I came back 40 minutes later, 4 of them were already of to a disco and the last was to drunk to be good company. So much for ceviche and birthdayparty for me. But at least they tried hard to addapt to the brasilian way of fiestas.
Because of the strike, I was struggeling with the cash-situation. I was running extremely short on money, and could't transfer anything to my account. So I had to stay in Oipaque yet another day, a bit hungry and thirsty.

Finally, I was set on money and got the hell out of what to me seemed like the human - trafficing centre of the world and in to French Guiana! Back in europe, strangely enough. Guiana is French territory, and has an intreeging Carribian meets Europe flavour to it. A very likeable place, except for the insane prices. I hitch-hiked my way from the border to Cayenne, the capitol, and started my search for accomodation. As it turned out, there are no hostels, hammock-spaces or anything under 45 euros, which is about 10 times the price of a decent hostel in Peru. s***! But I had no choice and checked in to the cheapest I could find. The rooms were big, air-conditioned and had nice, clean bathrooms with hot water. Wow. Although expensive, it was amazing. Turned out to be worth it, for one night..
Because of the prices I wanted to leave for Suriname as soon as possible and haeded for the consulate to apply for a visa the next morning. It turned out that you have to wait two days for a visa, which would set my economy back several weeks.. In the queue, I met a nice couple, Alex and Laura, from France who are working in Cayenne, and they offered me a guestroom in their house right outside the city!
I stayed with Alex and Laura for three nights and had a great time in their "villa" in Remire-Montsoly, a Cayenne suburb. The house was situated right next to the beach, a big spot of tropical forest and a big nesting site for the biggest sea turtles in the world, the leatherback. We went down to the beach one of the nights to see them come up on shore to lay their eggs, and I was blown away. The leatherback turtles grow up to 170cm and 400kg, massive. They are also critically endangered, so seeing theese strange, endangered creatures make their way up the sandy beaches was pretty amazing.
I also managed a trip to the tropical forest and got a seat at the show set up by shaolin munks in cayenne during my stay. The first, a great experience, and the latter kind of a dissappiontment. My impression of the shaolin - munnks are pretty much superhuman. But this show struck me more like a pretty decent group on Americas got talent.
Next stop was the "famous" islands were the storyline in the book Papillon supposedly happened, Iles de salut. In the port I met up once again with Ludvig, and we spent two good days on the islands. It really is a magnificent place, with Macaw-parrots, monkeys, Iguanas and other strange animals walking freely and unafraid about. My days there was mostly swimming, card playing and taking pictures of the animals.. A very good and tranquilo time!