French Guiana
We arrived this morning to Devil’s Island at about 7:30 am. This is a tender port and the Captain spent sometime with anchoring and positioning of the ship for the tendering process which was to begin at 8 am. The water was rough.
From our balcony we can see three islands. These are known as the Salvation Islands and are off the coast of French Guiana. I remember a trivia question that asked what the southern most bordering country of France was. The answer was Brazil. France considers all of its territories to be part of France. These islands were part of the now infamous French penal system.
The island referred to as Devil’s Island has been closed since 1953. We will be visiting Ile Royale. The other island is known as Saint Joseph Island. St. Joesph Island was known as the Reclusion and was used to punish prisoners in solitary confinement. Devil’s Island was used mainly for political prisoners. It operated from 1852 to 1953. There were many escapes from the island and probably the most famous was Henri Charriere who wrote the best selling book Papillon in 1969. The book was made into a movie in the early 1970s. Dustin Hoffman and Steve Macqueen starred in the movie that showed the harshness of the penal system. The film opens as I remember it with an execution by guillotine. Some of the scenes were shot on Devil’s Island.
Ile Royale was the reception center for the general population of prisoners. They were housed in moderate freedom because of the difficulty in escaping. You can view the mainland from these islands but even if you did manage to swim ashore, you are still in a foreign land, far from home. There is a restoration project on this island to preserve and rebuild the structures that remain.
We went down the exploration cafe to get tender tickets at about 7:30, expecting a crowd. Since it was very hot and also raining, few passengers were there. We managed to get on the first tender at 8 am and arrived at 8:15. We spent two hours wandering around viewing the sites and also did a walk around the island. It was very hot and humid. By 10:30, we were ready to head back to the air conditioned ship.
We spent the afternoon on the promenade deck and did some reading in the shade. We had a view of the islands and of the tenders going out and coming back.
The evening entertainment was comedian Sid Davis. Sid’s humor was based on telling stories about his experiences in life. One of the stories he shared was about how his father was sent to the store for certain items and came back with the “no name” brand for every item. Instead of laundry detergent “All” it was the brand called “Some”. He had a hilarious list of items. He also recalled his experience with Cap’n Crunch. He talked about the cereal that tore up the roof of your mouth and left it as raw as a skinned knee. I found it funny that other’s have experienced similar instances with this breakfast cereal.
Kimberley announced a ship wide water conservation effort on the ship. Were we going to run out of water? I was really confused by this. When I got back to the room, a note from the Captain explained that we wanted to have a draft as high as possible going through the shallow sand bar that crosses the entrance to the Amazon. This made sense but to create some urgency or importance to this effort the line “we do not want to have to load up on some possible unsafe water from this region”. I think this is something learned from the government. Don’t appeal to the intelligence of people, play to their fears. I have visited the ships water department and they have all of the sanitation facilities necessary. My guess is that no water can be dumped into the Amazon and they are trying to limit the amount in the holding tanks. I’m sure the fear works better than anything.…