Travel with Indigo

French Guyana, a department of France and not a sovereign nation, has as its capital the town of Cayenne, but as its harbor is too shallow to be accessible, so we pull into Kourou instead. One of this place’s two notable characteristics is that it’s the home of the French space program, a kind of Cape Canaveral in the jungle. The other is that it’s the mainland site for day trips to Devil’s Island (there are actually three islands clustered close together, only one of which bears this name), the notorious French penal colony that served as the involuntary home for many years of Mister (you can tell I have forgotten his first name) Dreyfuss, a man wrongly charged and convicted of being a traitor back in the late 1800s. More currently, it is also the island featured in the movie Papillion starring Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen.

While at anchor in the river at Kourou (there are no marina facilities), I take the tender about 25 miles upriver into the interior jungle and there find the banks lined with primitive camps used by the locals as getaways. They have hammocks, cook stoves, a raised floor, outhouse, a roof against the rain, but no walls. During my inspection I saw not a single mosquito, so walls aren’t needed to keep them out. Those plentiful dragon flies must be doing their job well. I also noted that although the river is only about 50 yards wide it is 70 feet deep in places, odd for a jungle river.

After the river excursion, Indigo leaves Kourou and travels the few miles out to Devil’s Island, now a French national park with cafe and quarters for the staff. The first thing I notice is the abundance of a peculiar animal called an agouti. The size of a small dog, the critter, to its misfortune, has a head resembling a large rat and the hind legs of a rabbit, a decidedly awkward and unattractive combination. They roam the park grounds at will nibbling away on the lawn.

Living close alongside these oddballs is a large population of giant iguanas in shades varying from neon green to pewter, some with large warts adorning their already ugly heads. The big guys, like me turned gray by their years, are nearly three feet in length. They hold a menacing pose while keeping a wary eye alert for predators.

For reasons that were not altogether clear, there was also a pen filled with feathered creatures that seemed not to belong there, like peacocks for instance, and quail, until I realized they were probably there as a prelude to appearing on a French park manager’s dinner plate. The whole scene, the old crumbling prison, the agouti, giant iguanas, two overfed enormous and raucous parrots, and a barnyard menagerie of other fowl gave the place the feel of a Jurassic Zoo.

The three island prisons are high, steep walled and volcanic and do a fine job discouraging escape. Covered in dense stands of coconut palms, wreathed with stretches of magnificent white sand beaches and rushed by constant but gentle trade winds, they are also a significant improvement over Alcatraz.