St Laurent is a penal colony on the banks of the Fleuve Marconi (Marconi River), which separates French Guiana and Suriname. We asked our bus to drop us at the Tourist Info so we could leave our bags while we checked out the town. We were joined by Marcus, a chatty German that was on our bus also heading to Suriname. We walked a short distance to the Ancien Camp de la Transportation, a prison camp for "The Transported", convicts who were deported to French Guia...

Back in Kourou on Sunday, just about everything was closed, so when we walked down the main street in search of lunch, we found nothing. A restaurant that the space engineers had recommended was also closed, so after walking around in the heat for what seemed like ages, we ended up back at the apartment eating rice crackers and peanut butter. In the cooler evening we checked out a free concert taking place on the beach but all in all this was a fairly uneventful ...

The Îles du Salut (Salvation Islands) were the setting for the incarceration of Alfred Dreyfus and Henri Charriere (Papillon. If you've read the book or seen the movie you'll know who we are talking about. We also suggest you research the story, as we did due to our visit, but be warned you may not like what you find out about the story...). There are 3 Islands: Île du Diable (Devil's Island), Île Royale and Île St Joseph. Other than Papillon and Dreyfus, a h...

Kourou is a very different looking town to Cayenne. It's a bit of a maze of narrow streets and low rise apartment buildings that appear to have been built solely to house employees of the space station. One of these apartments would be ours for the next few days. A lovely couple, Vanja and Hoëlig, lived there though we had it to ourselves as they were house sitting elsewhere. On the afternoon of our arrival a stage of the Tour de Guyane was ending in Kourou nea...

We arrived at the airport in Cayenne and the cost of the Euro hit hard straight away with a taxi into the city costing €30. We arrived at our apartment, the home of the lovely Amani, who sleeps in a hammock in the living room when she has guests. Amani offered to show us around, but later in the day when it cooled down a bit, so we relaxed in our room for a few hours until then. When we ventured out, we went first to Place des Amandiers (Almond Place), a gra...