Iles Du Salut

Today, we dropped anchor off the Salvation Islands of French Guiana; Iles Du Salut. A tender boat operation began aroound 9am, and we were ashore by about 10:30am, with very little bother from the current, which is always a little unpredictable in this area. Iles Du salut is a small group of three islands; Il Royale, St. Joseph, and the infamous Il Diablo, better known as Devil’s Island.

Up until the late 1960s, all three islands formed an off-shore penal colony with a fearsome reputation. Il Royale was the administrative hub, but also housed prisoners in brick-built cell blocks, while Devil’s Island was where they, basically, sent their longest-term prisoners to die. If you’ve seen the classic film Papillon, starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, then you pretty much know all you need to know about the islands, except perhaps for one thing… they are stunningly beautiful!

We’ve visited Iles Du Salut on several previous Amazon cruises, and I don’t think it’s a sweeping statement to say that it never disappoints – today was no exception. As well as the potential for rough seas making the trip unviable, there is another reason why a visit to the island, even if it is on the agenda, can never be guaranteed. A few miles away, on the mainland, is situated France’s Space centre. When rockets are launched, Il Royale forms an integral part of the tracking system; when this is imminent, the islands are out-of-bounds to visitors.

The island is small enough to walk around its perimeter in about one hour. We took a little longer because we were stopping frequently to take photographs, and there was no hurry today because the last tender back to the ship would be 4pm (a bit of a luxury, I should add, since previous visits have always been quite short, half-days).

We saw lots of the small Palm Rats (which look like large guinea pigs), monkeys and iguanas, and along the shoreline we spotted several large turtles. We gravitated, eventually, to the centre of the island, where we were right royally ripped off for drinks (a tiny can of Heineken for 5 euros…), but then anyone buying drinks on a French penal colony only have themselves to blame. It rained quite hard while we sat and supped out of our gold-plated cans, but only briefly;
by the time we were ready to continue our tour of the old penal buildings, the weather had returned to its hot and humid normality.

I challenge anyone to visit Iles Du Salut and not come away with a massive smile on their face. The faces were certainly beaming broadly on the tender boat back to the ship… definitely a good day for all!