Suriname and French Guiana

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Dear family and friends

We haven't met anyone who has visited any of the three small countries of Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana in the north-east corner of South America. We don't even know anyone from Venezuela who has visited neighbouring Guyana. Nobody we asked knew much about these countries, which made them all the more intriguing to us, and we were keen to visit them.


Woven hanging nests of Yellow-rumped Cacique (Cacicus cela) being blown around in stormy weather, French Guiana.

When we collected our passports from the Suriname Embassy in Venezuela, the consulate requested an interview. We assumed there was a problem with the visas, but the consulate was simply curious to meet travelers to her country. She said that in the 2 years she'd been consulate in Venezuela, we were the first people to apply to travel to Suriname!


Dutch architecture in Suriname - very different to Latin American architecture.

These three countries are relatively isolated from the rest of South America, both physically (hundreds of kilometers of roads that include dirt sections) and culturally (Guyana was a British Colony, Suriname was a Dutch colony and French Guiana is still a department of France), and hence they each speak a different language, none of which are spoken by any other country in South American (though English is a common second language).


French-influenced architecture in Cayenne, French Guiana.

After leaving English-speaking Guyana we took the ferry across the river to Suriname, where we struggled with the Dutch language. Unlike the almost exclusive African origins of people in Guyana, Suriname is an ethnic mix of Africans, Indians, Chinese and Indonesians. The main highway follows a narrow strip of flat agricultural land along the coast to the capital Paramaribo. The rest of the country (about 80%) is still rainforest and there are very few roads into the sparsely populated interior.


Flower of a tree in the rainforest.



French-influenced architecture in Cayenne, French Guiana

Another ferry crossing and we were in French Guiana, this time struggling with the French language, and back to riding on the left side of the road. Similar to Suriname, the population is an ethnic mix of Africans, Indians, Chinese and Hmong refugees from Laos. Most of the country is still rainforest. Cayenne, the capital, is strongly French in culture and the food is dominantly French Cuisine. Historically, French Guiana was mainly used as penal colony and Devils Island (not far from Cayenne) is where the prisoner 'Papillon' famously escaped.


There may be Champagne, Crepes and Croissants in Cayenne, but step outside town and you're in miles of wild South American jungle.

There is a new bridge between French Guiana and neighbouring Brazil, but politics between the countries mean that it has remained unused since completion in August 2011.  Instead, to get to Brazil, we had to put the bike on a small boat. This was a nerve-wracking experience for me, as the bike had to be man-handled off a concrete ramp into the small unstable boat. I wasn't even sure if the boat could take the 220 kg top-heavy weight. I could just see it happening - the big splash, the apologetic looks ("Ah, sorry about that"), and us buying bus tickets for the rest of our trip!

Fortunately there was no mishap, and with the bike in the boat, we precariously motored our way upstream to the Brazilian village of Oiapoque. Unloading the bike was an equally nerve-wracking experience.

We were now in northern Brazil, ready to head south to the Amazon River.

Loading the bike into a boat for the crossing to Brazil

The new bridge - finished but unfortunately for us, not open for traffic.



Many of the houses in the Brazilian village of Oiapoque are built above the swampy river margins and are connected by a network of elevated walkways.