So, catching up... if u ever find yerself traveling from Macapà to Oiapoque by bus in the rainy season. DON'T!! As written in the last blog entry, the busdrive was going to be around 12-24 hours, maybe more if it was raining. And as written it was indeed raining. The journey started out fine, and for 10 hours we had a remarkable good flow, but it was all about to come to an abrupt end. In the middle of nowhere, the dirty, slippy and wet road had totally collapsed. All that was left was a huge hole covering the whole road. Idling for hours without nothing happening we were finally told that there was a bus coming from the opposite direction to take us forward. Luckily, and for some odd reason there was a small restaurant nearby where we spent the next 7 hours pondering wether it was the restaurant owners that had sabotaged the road or not. Well, 7 hours passed, nothing seemed to happen and we were far from the only ones stuck. By then we were told that a machine to fix the road was on the move. Some truckdrivers were unpatient tho and started constructing a bridge. They put in a lot of effort, but sadly the road only became worse. But seeing the reaction on their faces we're pretty sure they thought they've accomplished quite a lot. Anyway, 12 hours had now passed and the oh so precious machine arrived. Project fixing road was moving forward. Another two hours and the badly misshapen road was beginning to look driveable again. Holding our breath we watched the bus slowly passing the collapsed part of it... SUCCESS!! Onwards to Oiapoque! We thought... but the bus didn't manage to drive for more than a half an hour before it was stuck in the mud. So, out out we went and several hours later a truck had managed to pull the bus free of the mud. Counting two more similar incidents, we were muddy, dirty, stinking and exhausted when we finally reached Oiapoque. Not less than 37 hours after we started the 12 hours drive. Salutations to the driver, it was a feat of strength to get the bus through on that road. Huge achievement!

However, this was no time to stop, so we quickly decided to go straight to Cayenne. Fixing formalities with the local police in Brazil we were soon on a motorized canoe crossing the river and heading for French Guiana. We have now entered Brazil by rowboat and French Guiana by motorized canoe. Explordinary!

No visa or entrystamp are needed for French Guiana as it is a part of France and therefore goes under the same laws and rules. 42 hours after Macapà we arrived Cayenne. At a first glance we found Cayenne to be a very pleasant city, nothing to big, a bit expensive, overall nice. But as the night arrived the city became deserted. Everything closed, all shops, all bars... everything except a couple of places to eat. We have to stay in Cayenne until Tuesday as we are applying for a Surinamese visa. Costs 42 euroes and is needed by most nationalities.

On a different note, it has come to our attention that friends and colleagues at home are whispering about the bodymass of the spoons evolving into the abnormal. We cannot confirm, neither can we deny that this is true. We would however like to stress the fact that when the spoons every morning glorifies the attractive images reflecting in the mirror we cannot help but thinking that this talk of weight is only a display of jealousy and envy of such strong and spectacular crafts we are.