Friday – 13 March 2009 – Devil's Island, French Guiana
It was a dark and stormy morning as we approached the islands off the coast of French Guiana. Also hot and humid. Ile Royale is the only one of these three very small and isolated islands that is available for visitors. The "town", main jail, solitary confinement area (where I used my "get out of jail free card" and effected a blasé pose), and death row were here. So was a lovely little hotel, restaurant, and gift shop. I bought a tee-shirt for $20.
The political prisoners (think Steve McQueen, Dreyfus, and Dr. Mudd) lived independently on the adjacent little island, the one actually called Devil's Island. I don't know where Humphrey Bogart was—in his only comedic role in "We're No Angels." So many questions in the tropics….
The view to the actual Devil's Island was quite lovely. So was the rat like creatures that abounded. Also abounded were hundreds of signs in French, all starting with the word "Interdit". There sure are a lot of things the Fr. Guiana park service doesn't want the tourists to do. Fortunately, few of us speak (or read) French. A couple from Cuba on the ship walked over to me and said, "Those French sure are controlling". They live in Cuba, did I mention? Another one of us from the ship asked if Castro is still alive. The woman from Cuba said, "We don't know." We all said we would like to visit. The Cuban couple had a very expensive camera, no doubt not from Wall Street Camera.
I walked on, over, and around Ile Royale, a hike of over 2 miles. Took lots of pictures and was back on the tender in less than 2 hours. Almost time for lunch now and then we sail for Granada after a sea day tomorrow.
Cold almost all better. Pool water isn't brown anymore from the Amazon. Water pressure in the rooms is back to normal as the ship's seawater treatment plant was disabled to avoid whatever was in the Amazon—which was 200 miles wide and out to sea 200 miles—from 4,000 miles of toilets and wee beasties. Will retard watch tomorrow night to catch up with Florida time which got an hour closer to us last weekend all by itself. Might post a "lost at sea" entry tomorrow or if not when I get home next week.
Cheers now from the very south Caribbean or the very north South America.
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