French Guiana

Cayenne — the capital of French Guiana (an overseas department of France — constitutionally part of France and the European Union, on the northeast coast of South America between Suriname and Brazil, 84,000km², 300,000 people) with the Place des Palmistes (the colonial palm-lined square with the Maison du Bagne — the penal colony museum, recording the history of the Devil’s Island prison system 1852–1953) and the remarkable Creole architecture of Cayenne’s old city.

💡 French Guiana is simultaneously part of France and of the Amazon Basin — it is the only place on earth where France (an EU member, using euros, part of the Schengen Area) shares a land border with Brazil. French Guiana has been a French overseas department since 1946, giving it the same constitutional status as Normandy or Brittany — its residents are French citizens, vote in French elections and use the euro. The Guyanese rainforest is protected French territory.

The Îles du Salut (the Salvation Islands — three small islands 15km offshore from Kourou: Royale (the main island with the best-preserved prison buildings), Saint-Joseph (the solitary confinement island) and Devil’s Island (Diable — the most famous, where political prisoners including Alfred Dreyfus were held — the most notorious penal colony of the 19th and 20th centuries, made famous by Henri Charrière’s autobiographical novel Papillon (1969)).

💡 The Îles du Salut penal colony (operated 1852–1953, holding approximately 80,000 prisoners over its 101-year operation, of whom approximately 70,000 died from disease, punishment or escape attempts) was the French equivalent of Siberia — a deliberate place of exile from which return was extremely rare. Alfred Dreyfus (the French army officer falsely convicted of treason in 1894 in the most famous miscarriage of justice in French history) was held on Devil’s Island for 4 years before his conviction was quashed.

Kourou (the town that hosts the Guiana Space Centre — Europe’s main spaceport, from which Ariane 5 and Vega rockets launch commercial and scientific satellites into orbit — guided tours available, the launch pad visible from the public viewpoint 10km away, and the rocket assembly building 7km² in floor area, the largest building in France by floor area) in a town of 26,000 people surrounded by Amazon rainforest.

💡 The Guiana Space Centre (Centre Spatial Guyanais — operated by CNES and ESA, in continuous operation since 1968) uses Kourou’s near-equatorial location (5.3°N latitude) to take maximum advantage of the earth’s rotational speed for launching satellites into geostationary orbit — rockets launched near the equator receive a 460m/s boost from the earth’s rotation that reduces fuel requirements significantly. The site is the primary launch facility for European space missions.

Awala-Yalimapo (a Galibi Amerindian village at the northwest tip of French Guiana — the Plage Les Hattes, the most important leatherback sea turtle nesting beach in the world: in the March–August nesting season, up to 60,000 leatherback females nest here, with peak nights in April–May seeing hundreds nesting simultaneously by moonlight — one of the most extraordinary wildlife spectacles in South America).

💡 Plage Les Hattes at Awala-Yalimapo holds approximately 50–60% of the entire global leatherback sea turtle population’s Atlantic nesting. In a good season, up to 60,000 individual females nest here between March and August — a total nesting effort that dwarfs any other leatherback beach in the world. The leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) can dive to 1,280m and travel 20,000km between nesting and feeding grounds in the North Atlantic.

The Réserve Naturelle de Trésor (a rainforest reserve 90km from Cayenne on the Kaw Road — one of the most biodiverse stretches of Amazon rainforest accessible from a road, with jaguars, giant anteaters, tapirs, giant river otters, 700+ bird species and the Kaw Marshes (the largest freshwater marsh in the Guianas — black caiman, anaconda, horned screamers and hoatzin visible from a pirogue at dawn) as the highlight.

💡 French Guiana has the highest biodiversity per km² of any French territory — the 84,000km² Amazon rainforest contains approximately 1,000 bird species, 200 mammal species, 300 reptile and amphibian species and an estimated 5,000–8,000 plant species, most of which are also found in Amazonian Brazil. The Kaw Marshes (Marais de Kaw) are the only large freshwater wetland system in the Guiana Shield, providing habitat for species not found elsewhere in French Guiana.

Saül (a small village at 200m in the interior highlands of French Guiana — accessible only by small aircraft or 4WD track from the coast, surrounded by the Amazon-Guiana rainforest, the centre of a network of jungle trails to waterfalls, river crossings and the highest concentrations of jaguar in French Guiana — the most ecotourism-oriented destination in the territory, with basic guesthouses and certified local guides).

💡 Saül is located at the edge of the Guiana Amazonian Park — the largest national park in France and the EU at 3.4 million hectares, larger than Belgium, with some of the least-disturbed Amazon rainforest in the world. The park has no roads and can only be entered by boat, foot or helicopter; Saül is the main access point for organised trekking into the southern wilderness.

The Marché de Cayenne (the most authentic and biodiverse food market in South America — Creole, Hmong (Laotian refugees from the 1970s), Amerindian, Brazilian and French food traditions sold side by side, with the finest Guianese specialities: bouillon d’awara (a thick, orange-coloured stew of awara palm fruit with smoked meats and fish — the most important ceremonial dish of the Creole Easter tradition) and the fresh forest fruits unknown in Europe). Fly from Cayenne (CAY).

💡 The Hmong community of French Guiana (approximately 2,000 Laotian Hmong refugees resettled by France after the Vietnam War in 1975, now living primarily in the village of Cacao 75km from Cayenne) are the dominant market gardeners of French Guiana, supplying 90% of the territory’s fresh vegetables. The Sunday market at Cacao (a Hmong village of 1,500 people in the Amazon forest) is the finest artisanal and food market in French Guiana.