The border crossing between Suriname and France. Yes it really is France, I didn’t even got an entry stamp in the passport!

And if you still don’t believe it on arrival, they show you with the typical sign when entering France

St-Laurent-du-Maroni

Hier hat man einen Briefkasten zu haben, denn die Post ist wichtig in Frankreich!
 
Gendarmerie National mit handgemaltem Schild in Apatou, eine der grössten Städte im Landesinnern, am Maroni Fluss

Irgendetwas hat mich letzte Nacht gebissen oder gestochen. Schüttelfröste und Erbrechen mit heavy Kopfweh war das Resultat.
Ich dachte nicht, dass ich heute schon wieder transportfähig bin. Ja, noch etwas schwach auf den Beinen aber die Tour ist ja schliesslich schon bezahlt!

Laura geht’s nicht besser, seit schon fast einer Woche Grippe. Blöde Kombination, wenn beide nicht richtig funktionieren…

One would think entering France in South America would finally get you some advantages of modern life: Weit gefehlt! Hier ist es sogar eine Herausforderung ein Taxi zu bestellen. Grundsätzlich noch schwieriger am Wochenende hier in St. Laurent du Maroni, die erste Stadt nach der Grenze zu Suriname, am Maroni Fluss. Nachdem wir in einem fancy Restaurant gespeist haben dachten wir, dass es nicht schwierig sei, dass die vom Restaurant uns ein Taxi rufen. Aber nein! Mann muss jemanden kennen der den Service auch am Wochenende macht. Mann muss eine Person seines Vertrauens haben. Sollen wir nun also 2 Kilometer in der Nacht in einem neuen Land nach Hause spazieren? Alle sagten es ist nicht gefährlich. Wir hatten dann doch das Glück, dass ein Angestellter eine Nummer hatte. Der Taxifahrer meinte es sei eine sehr schlechte Idee in der Nacht hier nach Hause zu spazieren. Möglicherweise gut investierte fünf Euro! Ist ok, dass wir es nie wissen werden und nun haben wir seine Nummer ;)… Update: Wo wir Felix dann das nächste Mal gebraucht hätten, ist sein Auto nicht mehr angesprungen. Hoffnungslos hier ohne Auto!

Die Guyanas enttäuschen nicht: Wer sich das Leben schwierig machen will, ist hier gut bedient. Morgen geht’s auf eine weitere Runde ‘organisierte Tour’ im Maroni River. Jetzt sprechen alle französisch. Nicht mehr holländisch und in guter französischer Tradition verstehen sie nichts anderes, ich muss meine letzten Erinnerungen ans Französisch aus den Abbissen der Vergangenheit hervorkramen.

French Guyana: Der Surinamische Taxifahrer meinte die Franzosen interessiert dieser ‘Kanton’ der Franzosen nur fürs Gold und sonst nicht wirklich… Kein guter Käse, kein gutes Baguette wie in Martinique oder Guadeloupe – aber wie unser Host meint: ‘la vie douce’. Das süsse Leben! Was mit anderen Worten wohl heisst viel Sonne und wenig Stress. Und sie haben auch hier noch ein Bisschen Karibik Feeling mit der eleganten französischen Version der Rum Kultur: Un petit punch: Rum, ein paar Tropfen Zuckerrohr Sirup und ein paar Tropfen Zitronensaft.

Also: Lots of mosquitos here! On the bright side: Everyone seems to agree that you can drink the tap water. That’s a luxury I will enjoy so much if we ever make it back to Swissylandia… Because there it will not only be drinkable, but also without the horrid chlorine taste. Paying by Maestro seems to be a standard here. It’s a car country, good roads but almost no public transport – As we not planning to travel a lot here we do everything by public transport. But it’s a lot of work – and this in 2019. Information in the internet is mostly a few years old and not accurate. We asked for a transportation to Cayenne, the capital (actually shouldn’t it be Paris? Not that french after all?), finding out that transport is a problem. We have to go with the flow. It’s good, it’s traveling – or at least what I knew to be traveling. Nowadays they call it ‘the old idea of romantic traveling’ and I’m not even that old… Laura found the address of the tourism office. They didn’t speak anything else than french, but I still managed to get a number from someone who supposedly does the transfer from St Laurent to Cayenne. This guy said yes and I should write him a WhatsApp. WhatsApp is very helpful, everyone has it almost and you only need WIFI to use it. So I wrote him, he then didn’t replied for hours. Their idea of communications is obviously different! Anyways: With some luck he will be picking us up here at 11AM and transporting us to Cayenne.

What does it mean to have touristic infrastructure? It means to get without problems to a place and the people welcome you and take their time to tell you where to go to see the touristic sights and all the needed infos on how to move on from your current destination. Or with other words: Here they don’t do that services – it seems to me that the French Guyana is possibly even the least traveled destination of them three – there is officially not much to see and it’s expensive. So people basically just travel through as fast as they can.

Let’s see if we can do any better. My hope is to have some interesting encounters in Cayenne, if not I at least want to try some of them really spicy food, for which the capital got it’s name for. We have the time to take our time! We have to be in Belén for our flight to Manaus on the 22 of October, and it really takes only three days to get there: so maximum 15 more days to enjoy the last of the Guyanas! It all depends if we find a good and reasonable priced AirBNB in Cayenne – Update: We did: 50USD and in the center is really cheap for Cayenne. Our own little apartment with Wifi, Airconditioning and in this case very needed: washing machine – once again I’m shirtless this morning, looking trough the dirty clothes to choose the least smelling one – note to self: it’s time to buy some shirts!

There is only one ferry between Macapá and Belén which only runs Thursdays and Sundays, if that information is still correct. We now decided four nights is enough in Cayenne with a day trip to Cacao, a town an hour south of Cayenne, where people from Laos live – we have definitely to go there for a possibly very authentic noodle soup. But how to get there? Maybe we rent a car, it’s gonna be the same price like taking the bus and much less work to find one and the waiting time.

Cayenne is the only capital city in the Guyanas, which feels like a city of our times. But for this reason also the least spectacular. Always when I enter french territory I’m getting bored really fast, same with Martinique and Guadalupe. Can’t really connect with them french people – which leads me to the conclusion that the Swiss French are definitely not French! And maybe we are also just a bit tired of traveling so intensely without pause and with flu here and a scratch there (the other night I had a throbbing head ache, chills and then had to vomit – it seems that some ant or fly bit me). Maybe we just stay in the air coned room for a few days and charge ourself before getting out there again!

Cayenne is definitely the best organized city in the Guyanas and also has a few nice corners. The beach though is not very Caribbean: Sand following by mud and only far out the muddy color changes for blue. But at least the birds like it to pick up food – and we like to see the birds!