Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

It was an early morning taxi ride to the Montego Bay airport for our Inter Caribbean flight to Kingston, Jamaica enroute to the Dominican Republic. The domestic portion of the airport is in a small unsigned corner of the airport with lots of mossies and no air conditioning, quite unlike the international section. We had to fly back to Kingston and transit there to reconnect with another flight to Providenicales in the Turks and Caicos Islands. There are not many seats at Kingston for all the waiting passengers so it is an uncomfortable wait. The best thing was that our bags were checked right through to Santo Domingo so we didn't have to lug them about.

Once in Provos, as the locals call it, we had to wait on the tarmac for an agent to escort us through the airport as they have no transit lounge. The airport was full of holiday makers either arriving on the island or transiting to somewhere else. It was chaos as we had to have our hand luggage x-rayed and remove our shoes about 3 times. The whole time we were escorted everywhere by the agent in and out of the queues of bewildered passengers. We had to buy a tourist card for US$20U and it gave us a multiple entry visa for 30 days. The agent didn't speak Spanish so the people from the Dominican Republic had no idea what was happening. This all meant we were late leaving on our flight out.

Through Expedia, John had managed to get a ticket online for a shuttle bus to drop us at our hotel in the old part of Santo Domingo. It was half the price offered by the taxi drivers.

The hotel room was a bit small for our week long stay so we negotiated for a bigger room. We were two streets from the walking street in the old city so it was a handy location and safe to walk about at night.Unfortunately the hotel decided this was the best time to start demolishing the terrace bar area and renovate it to make a karaoke bar, so it was pretty noisy during the day. The place was a bit mouldy and damp as it rained everyday so it was not as comfortable as we would have liked but it was all we could find at the time. We got a local breakfast of green bananas fried with butter, topped with cheese and accompanied with sausage. The tropical fruit was also most welcomed every day.

Vertical garden on side of car park building facing walking street

The Dominican Republic has 11 million people with 3 million in Santo Domingo so it is a crowded place. After the devastating hurricane in Haiti, the DR is having a lot of problems with illegal immigrants from there.

Waling street

We took our time visiting the UNESCO World Heritage sites and its historic buildings. Our first walk along the Malecon or beach promenade was an eye opener. It stunk of urine and human faeces and there were piles and piles of plastic rubbish floating on the waves and all over the banks to the sea.

Rubbish munched up to bits in the ocean

The Malecon is promoted as the place  for tourists to go but it was gross. Trucks with diesel fumes and loud engines roared by the open air restaurants and homeless people stretched out on the seats in the parks to sleep off their hangovers in the 29 DegC temperatures and the 80-90% humidity.

Christopher Columbus's son's house

We enjoyed some of the museums. At the Palacio Virreinal Museo Alcazar de Colon we saw how Christopher Columbus's son lived when he founded the city. A lot of the furniture is not original but a replicas of what they would have had. We were able to hire a headset and have a commentary as we moved from room to room. Luckily we made it without any huge tour groups coming through at the same time as us.

The renovated fort

There was a great supermarket near us and we could buy hot food or fresh fruit and wholegrain bread and Spanish wines and local beer. It was a real treat to eat things we are used to and visited it everyday. A lot of the food items are imported from the USA.

John got an infected throat from swimming in the pool in Montego Bay and it made him very lethargic so we only ventured out after he had rested and felt up to it. We were able to use some of the medication we carry and buy others at the supermarket to get him more comfortable. There never seemed to be a worry that it may be malaria, zika or some other major illness as he had no rashes, fevers or joint aches. However he did manage to pass it to me but I had a fever one night and was fine the next day. It was good to be able to rest up and not have to be off catching buses or planes to different parts.

We had been in touch with our Uruguayan friend who has been working in Haiti and was passing through Santo Domingo on his way to holiday with his father on the coast. We tried to meet up with him at the bus station but we missed him as he was delayed and that was such a shame. We had stayed in his apartment in Asuncion and didn't get to see him there either. So, it will have to be another place and another time.

Lots of cruise ships call into Santo Domingo and often large groups of tours would flood the place during the day and then it would be quiet again at night as they headed off. As it is the low season a lot of restaurants are looking for customers and want to give meals without the required government taxes. We tried a local place and ate local dishes of chicken, rice and green bananas. When we needed some fresh vegetables we went to the Chinese restaurants in Chinatown and for a change we even tried a Mexican place for a bit of spice and tacos.We were surprised there are not more spicy dishes here.

Part of the old city walls

We were able to chat online with Kerri, Adam and the kids. John used the time to get our online flights onto a USB stick and get them printed off ready for the onward trips.

There is always music playing here. There are some bars that open into the street. Usually a counter runs the width of the room and the shelves behind are covered with toilet paper canned foods and bottles of rum for sale. The music is loud and men sit on plastic chairs astride the drain between the road and the footpath playing dominoes. Inside the bar the men and women dance cheek to cheek while others sit on stools or lean against the counter drinking rum and singing. It is like this all night and on weekends. Pretty much like what we expect Cuba to be like.

Next stop, back to Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Montego Bay, Jamaica

We could not get a bus ticket from Kingston to Montego Bay so took another Inter Caribbean flight. We braved the local buses to the airport and had quite a wait for the number 74 and when we connected with the 98 a bus inspector recognised us and asked how things were going. We then found out there are only two buses doing the route. It is very hard for the lovely air conditioned public buses to compete with the 'coasters' who trawl the streets, the registered taxis, and the private cars that pick up people.

It was a long day at the airport for our evening flight and there are hardly any seats  for the number of people waiting to board flights. Our 30 seater plane had a smooth trip and we could see a few islands of the many in this area.

We checked into a resort, one street off the beach. It was an older style place with lots of gardens, a pool and restaurant. It sits at the end of what is known as the 'hip strip' where all the bars, clubs and restaurants are. A perfect location for us.We were told when we left the resort that we would be hassled by the locals in the hip strip. There are loads of clothing shops selling what looks like the same stuff. Tee shirts with Jamaica and various marijuana or ganja comments. We regularly got asked if we wanted to buy marijuana and every shop attendant greeted us with 'Shopping now'.as we passed several times during our stay.

The private hotel beaches that were guarded by men and cameras

The majority of the beaches are private, being taken over by the resort hotels, so we visited a couple of the beaches where the locals hang out. These get visited by guys on motorbikes selling ice creams from styrafoam boxes on the back of their bikes, accompanied by blaring music- when the driver gets the vibes. Pedlars roam selling nuts and cold drinks. The locals discard the rubbish on the beach and the bins overflow and blow about. We noticed some steel cage bins with masses of burnt and melted  rubbish under them and a fresh load of rubbish above. There are always black plastic bags of rubbish on the side of the street and they get torn apart by homeless people looking for food or roaming cats and dogs. We saw the streets being regularly swept of leaves and rubbish but a lot of it seemed to just get thrown over the bank out of sight near the beach. Our tourist map told us the locals like to use black plastic bags when they buy goods from a shop as they do not want anyone to know what they have bought. They then went on to advise us, the tourists, to buy fabric shopping bags to reduce the rubbish. I thought, there is something not quite right with this message.It is not the tourists throwing the rubbish over the banks.

After exploring the hip strip we decided to go into the downtown area. It was a short walk from the beach. We visited Sam Sharpe square named after the leader of a slave rebellion in 1831.

Sam Sharpe Square

 Nearby was the cage where the runaway slaves and sailors were kept awaiting transport to jail.

The cage was originally made of wood

The whole place was dirty, noisy and a buzz with people. On the sides of the streets were men with their carts in the shape of a bob sledge, from the movie 'Cool Running', dashing between the traffic to sell their fruit and vegetables.Young men wanted to know if we wanted them as tour guides and taxi drivers wanted to drive us everywhere. It was quite claustrophobic so once we had seen the sites we were back to the hotel. A local told us unemployment runs at 30%. John enjoyed the pool all for himself as there are not many people in our hotel complex.

Aeroplanes come and go at frequent intervals all day from the local airport which has dozens and dozens of check in counters. There are always trails in the sky. It seems lots of people head off to resorts rather than stay along the coast near the hip street.

The boozy beach bar

We saw a few tourists at the open air bar on the beachfront where they were enticed by loud music, happy hour and two for one drink offers. Catamarans met them outside the bar for boozy cruises and young people played about on the air filled cushions on the water. The bar turned into a nightclub in the evening. Some of the restaurants and bars not on the beachfront were empty and neglected as they were unable to compete.

One night as we were getting ready to go to the hotel restaurant for a meal, we got a call from the office to turn our air conditioner off for a few minutes.When we got outside we saw a local pest exterminator all geared up. As it had rained two days before, he needed to fog spray the whole outside of the resort to control the mosquitoes and the spread of zika. The fog was so thick we could not see more than a metre ahead. I lost John in the fog and ran off to find a clear space away from the fog so I could breathe properly. The fog rose like a Dacron cover over the lodge buildings and completely wrapped them. It lingered for quite a long time and felt like we were in a smokey fire. We were left with a tickle in our throats for the next day.

The hotel restaurant had a television that the staff watched as the Olympic Games in Rio were on and many Jamaicans were competing. They screamed the place down whenever a Jamaican won. Although there were only a few choices on the menu, we did find something nice to eat but also found a Chinese restaurant so we could enjoy some fresh stir fried green vegetables.

It was an early start on our last day to take a flight to Providenciales on the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Kingston, Jamaica

We thought we were well prepared for our exit from Port of Spain by checking on the location of the buses to the airport. Unfortunately the bus driver neglected to tell us that the buses do not run on the weekends, so we had to bargain with a private vehicle posing as a taxi to take us to the airport. Taxis have either a taxi sign or an H on their number plate but anyone with a car scouts for fares.

Our Caribbean Airways flight was delayed as it had to wait for a connecting flight. We had booked an apartment online as the hostels and budget hotels had dreadful reviews. The owner of our Kingston apartment offered to pick us up and she had to wait quite a while for us. While we packed the car, John had to get money from an ATM but it had run out.

On the way to the apartment Donette told us that she had 'upgraded' us at no extra cost to a different apartment. The people who were in our chosen apartment decided to stay on. This was a bummer because we had chosen the apartment for its convenient location to the places we wanted to visit by walking and now we had no idea where we were going and had no choice but to take the apartment.

The apartment turned out to be pretty big with a great internet connection on which we were able to watch our new grand daughter gurgling and stretching. There was also a huge TV that John could watch the Olympic sports on. When Donette left we realised we did not know the address of the apartment so had to ask the guard at the gate. We did however, have a huge 24 hour Mega Mart across the road so were able to get supplies in for our stay.

The apartment building

After some googling we were able to work out where we were and plan the things we wanted to do. The next day we headed off to visit Devon House but being a Sunday everything was closed. We were able to get a pasty from the Devon bakery and sit under the enormous trees to cool off from the 33 DegC heat and high humidity. Back at the apartment John was able to book our buses for our trip in Cuba and I was able to organise some accommodation at private houses called casa particulares. Both websites were difficult to use so it took a lot of patience and trial and error.

We relished being able to have a breakfast of muesli, yoghurt, and fresh fruit. A welcome change from salted fish, canned tuna and chicken sausages in Port of Spain. Once filled we headed back to Devon House about 20 minutes from us. It is a National Heritage place and was built by Trinidad's first black millionaire. He had made his money from gold mining in Venezuela.

The furniture is not original but are pieces from that era. The chandeliers were all original. There was even an attic for gambling that had a set of concealed stairs,being an illegal activity then.

Devon House Ball Room

The second site we wanted to visit was the Bob Marley museum. It was a further 30 minutes walk and we joined a couple of Germans and were shown around by a guide, Bus loads of tourists arrived and it was a bit cramped and rushed at times to get through the small rooms in Bob's original house. 

The recording studio is still there and is used by Bob and Rita's sons. The bullet holes are in the walls where Bob was shot at and a video of his concert in Auckland was screened in the theatre. Bob died aged 36 of melanoma. By the end of the tour I still did not understand his non violent beliefs and how it fitted with his song 'I Shot The Sheriff'' His lifestyle of fresh vegetarian food and smoking marijuana seemed at odds to me. His catchy tunes I do get and our guide did his best to sing as many of them as he got the opportunity to.

We could not take photos inside the house, only of stuff in the garden.

So, the two things we wanted to do we had done in one day! Kingston has no 'heart'. It has an 'Uptown' where we were. The Governor General's residence and embassies and large houses are in Uptown. The 'Downtown' is crowded and where all the others live. Like Trinidad, any car can be a taxi and when ever they see anyone walking, they stop and toot looking for customers, This habit causes a lot of driver frustration and near misses on the busy roads.

We had to be sure to pack an umbrella and coat as it rains every so often. It is easy to tell when it will come as the wind picks up and the grey clouds close in and the temperature drops.

After visiting Devon house we learnt about the 1692 earthquake that destroyed a lot of Port Royal, near the airport. We managed to google the local bus numbers and decided the place was worth a visit even though it is not publicised in any of the tourist information we had. The first bus had a radio blaring a hell, fire and brimstone religious leaders sermon while the second had religious music that the passengers joined in singing to. There are churches all over.

Known as the 'Giddy House' from sinking in an earthquake

Port Royal was founded in 1518 and was once the largest city in the Caribbean as a centre for shipping and and commerce.It was a notorious home port for English and Dutch privateers. In the late 16th century, governments withdrew their support for the privateers and it became a home for pirates. Henry Morgan was one of the better known ones. The 1692 earthquake dumped a lot of the port into the sea and it was rebuilt and destroyed several times after this date. Fort Charles is now a museum with many relics of that time. Some of the locals see the earthquakes as acts of God for the immoral lives the pirates lived there.

Having taken the public bus to the port past the airport we felt confident to use them to leave for our flight to Montego Bay rather than use Donette and her over priced ride. There is a bus between Kingston and Montego Bay but it was fully booked because of the school holidays so we were lucky to get a flight.

Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago

We spent one more day in Paramaribo after our journey back from Cayenne. We got all our laundry washed and dried and repacked the backpacks we had left behind after just taking day bags to Cayenne. Paramaribo was the nearest city we could take a flight to Port of Spain Trinidad and Tobago. John also spent the day finalising flights for the Caribbean section of our trip. It has been the hardest to organise as there are no boats between islands and we have to take flights.Some of the flights used Miami as their hub so that was also an issue as to where we would go to next.

We booked our taxi driver for the ride to the airport and he arrived in the dark at 2.30 AM so we could be on time to check in for our 5.50 departure to Port of Spain.

It is always helpful when the accommodation we book gives us clear instructions on how to reach them by public transport.We found a place in the Port of Spain airport to buy a local bus ticket and joined others in the air conditioned partly empty bus. When locals got on they greeted everyone in the bus with a loud 'Good morning' and like a classroom of respectful students the passengers replied. Quite extraordinary.

We arrived at a maze of roadways at the city bus terminal and asked the locals where we could get a taxi. We were directed by the locals to a street where cars stopped and took people in the direction they were going. Our driver didn't know our street but after a couple of calls dropped us at the door of our B & B. We later learnt that taxis have a 'H' number plate but it seemed everyone could turn their private vehicle with a 'P' number plate into a taxi. We rarely saw a 'taxi' sign on a car.

The receptionist directed us to a local roti shop around the corner and we hat a local dish called 'buss up shut'. It came in a Styrofoam box and consisted of curried chicken, chickpeas, roti, lentils and a hot sauce.

The B and B booked us on a northern islands boat tour with the National Heritage Trust. It was a sunny day and we joined a couple of hundred people on the catamaran including loads of school kids on holiday programmes. The lady who gave a commentary throughout, was an ex history teacher so we got all the information on the history of the islands, residents and their stories. One of the islands was a whaling station, one was a leprosarium run by the Dominican sisters from France and one had a limestone quarry. One island still has a prison but it will be shut down in the near future. There are lots of holiday homes scattered in the small bays and the Venezuela ranges can be seen about ten kilometres away.

There were several dozen oil rigs and oil tankers in the bay all parked up as they cannot sell the oil as the prices are so low. Some have been parked up for two years. A lot of projects that the government had planned have not been able to progress as there is not enough money in the budget now.

Cuppa with NZ powdered milk and ginger nuts!

John spent some more time online planning and booking flights to get us through the rest of our trip. We planned to go from Port of Spain to Tobago Island and had to buy a ferry ticket through a travel agency, We found our nearest agency and discovered that the website was down and had to return the next day to do it. We have discovered that transportation is poorly organised here. The next day we discovered that the ferries had been booked out since June because of the school holidays and no extra sailings were timetabled. We tried to get a flight but they were all booked out and there were no extra flights. We had to cancel our accommodation bookings in Tobago and had to plead our case to get our money back and that took a few persuasive emails.

 Luckily we were able to keep our room at the B & B as accommodation here is very expensive and reviews are not good. As it is, this is the most expensive place we have stayed out in our whole trip other than the resort lodge at Iwokrama, Guyana. The B & B is nothing special with few facilities and a 30 minute walk from the city centre.It is probably expensive because it is in the posh, safe part of town where real estate is expensive. The president lives not far away too.

John was happy to be able to watch the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics on the TV in our room as well as all the other sports. It was a thrill to see the Fijians win the sevens rugby against Great Britain. As it is the rainy season it is also a good excuse to be inside to watch some of the events.

Queens College

One Saturday night there was an outdoor concert nearby us. It started at midnight and got louder and louder waking us at 3 am. It finally shut down at 10 am. When we talked about it to the nightwatchman, he said it was OK because it had been approved by the government and that meant it was fine to disturb the neighbourhood. Even though the president lives nearby he is actually in Florida so it didn't disturb his household. We walked near the site and were stopped crossing the road as it was a crime scene. We later saw that someone had tried to rob a nightclub and was hiding on a house roof in the area.

Stollmeyer's residence

There is not a heck of a lot to do here in Port of Spain and transport is so difficult and taxis so expensive to hire. We had booked on a walk in the hills to a waterfall with a hikers' group in the middle of the island and when the taxi came to get us we discovered that it would cost us US$100 to come and go to do a US$10  hike that would take 30 minutes. We dropped that idea and spent the time walking through the botanical gardens instead.

Every day we get out and walk somewhere and found a farmers' market one day and bought some home made guava wine and a red sorrel wine.

Tamboo bamboo band

We walked into the city centre one evening to head to a steel band parade in a poor area called Laventille. We had to ask the locals where we could take a shared taxi to the parade and were sent all over Independence Square until finally getting an ex policeman who drove us. He warned us about the area and told where to go and where not to go. There were tents lining the road with families selling cold drinks, grilled chicken, rice and noodle dishes. We sheltered in a stall as it pelted down and only got to see the Tamboo Bamboo group and a couple of other bands as everyone waited until the rain stopped. By the time the 30 odd bands set off, it was already dark, and a few locals had consumed more than enough beers. We decided it was best to head back being the only white faces on the street and not wanting to draw attention to ourselves. We spotted a bus heading in the direction we wanted and flagged it down. From the terminal we got a local car with an ex soldier who brought us home.

Setting up the walking steel panners

On Tuesday 9th August 2016, we got a message that we had a grand daughter. We were able to talk to our daughter and her husband and see wee Charlotte Eva and hear all the news. The internet makes such events possible and even though the signal here is weak and erratic we were still able to see Charlotte jiggling and wriggling. She will be 6 weeks old when we are able to give her a cuddle.

We enjoyed a visit to the National Museum and Art Gallery. There were displays of all the different ethnic groups that settled the country. East Indians (35.4%) came to work in the sugar cane plantations. Africans (34.2%) were slaves. Africans and others mixed are 15.3% while mixed African and East Indians are 7.7%. There are also a large number of Syrians and Lebanese.

Near the museum is a huge cultural centre that looks like an aluminium copy of the Sydney Opera House. It was built by a Chinese company and has lots of unused sections.

The receptionist organised a trip with a church friend of hers to take us for a look at the pitch lake at La Brea. It contains the largest natural deposit of asphalt in the world. It covers 40 hectares and is reported to be 75 metres deep.The houses in the surrounding area built on the pitch are moving as the pitch oozes out of the ground and heats up. Three boys were swimming in pools of water that covered parts of the pitch and a local told us the water was a good mosquito repellent.

We went further on to visit a Hindu temple near San Fernando where a large population of Hindu Indians live. We passed a crowded park where several pyres were burning to cremate bodies.

In the early afternoon we stopped at the Caroni Swamp where we joined some of the locals on a boat to check out the wetlands. We saw several kinds of crabs, fish and caiman, blue herons and egrets as well as a snake on a branch waiting for the bats.

The scarlet ibis is the national bird and the swamp is its protected sanctuary. It was spectacular watching them fly in from Venezuela to roost in the trees on sunset.

The rains have been heavy about every third day and straight after them it gets very hot. There is also and increase in the number of small mosquitoes and something called no-see ums, which like to bite. There is no malaria here but there are incidents of Zika and West Nile viruses and chikungunya which are all mosquito borne diseases. We have now used up all the Deet based repellents we brought with us and have to use the local stuff which has a surprisingly low amount of Deet.

We are disappointed not to have been able to get to Tobago but are looking forward to our next stop in Kingston, Jamaica.

Cayenne,French Guiana

We organised a taxi to take us the two hour drive to the border with French Guiana. The driver brought his young son along as it was school holidays and he doesn't go back to school until October. The road was smooth and well sealed with no police check points at all. Every small community had a supermarket with a Chinese name or red lanterns hanging out the front.

At the immigration office we were stamped out and headed to the pier for the ferry to cross the river to French Guiana. A customs officer told us the ferry would be about 20 minutes away. While we waited a couple of women arrived to join us. A long boat driver approached us and offered to take the four of us across to the French Guiana immigration office and then onto the dock where the minivans wait for passengers at St Laurent du Maroni.

 We negotiated a reasonable rate and chatted to Maritsia and Mercedes from Colombia. They had been school friends since they were 7 years old and did a trip together every year. Maritsia lived in Georgetown with her husband and Mercedes in Madrid.They were only visiting for two nights and had not booked any accommodation or done much research. We gave them our book to look up information so they could find somewhere to stay that was in their budget.

At the minivan station were were mobbed by van drivers wanting to take us in their vans. We ended up in a van with four French nationals who had been on a jungle trip camping in the rainforest. They were able to give us all sorts of useful information as they all worked in Cayenne. When we were checked at a police post they told us many pregnant women from Suriname, Guyana or Brazil try to come to have babies in French Guiana so they can get a European passport.

We checked into our hotel and had a quiet room on the third floor at the back of the building and away from the main street which was thankfully quiet. There was a sign at reception letting us know that the staff spoke French, English and Portuguese.

French Guiana is a department of France.They use the Euro and it is the most expensive country in South America. The cars have F on their number plates as in Europe and they carry French passports. As well as French the locals speak Patois, a mix of Creole, Amerindian languages, French, Indian, and English. All public functionaries are staffed by people from mainland France- police, civil servants, teachers etc.

It has a brutal past being a penal colony and we remember reading the book Papillon by Henri Charriere. We could see Ilses du Salut where he was a prisoner, 15 kilometres off the coast. It is not possible to visit Devil's Island where he was but there were tours to the other nearby islands.

We walked to the highest hill in town to look over the city and get our bearings. Of all the Guyanas it is the tidiest and the best laid out place. There were very few open drains and the footpaths were properly formed so you didn't have to dodge cars. It had some lovely old wooden buildings and a huge grassy square with palm trees in the middle of the city.

 At 6pm the square is lined with food trucks. Some sell ice cream and cold drinks while others sell either hamburgers or noodles and some crepes. The menus all look the same and no one does anything different. There is grandstand seating and the locals come out with their babies and children to enjoy the cool of the evening. Kids ride bikes and practise their tricks. Military men drink beer and eat their burgers while mum's treat the toddlers to the merry go round.

We were very surprised by the number of Chinese supermarkets in the city.Some were only one shop apart. They sold foodstuffs as well as plastic goods, bicycles, blankets and household goods; whatever they could squeeze in or onto the footpath. As well as these supermarkets there were dozens of clothing shops with clothing from China. The Chinese run shops were open everyday and they were the last ones to close at night.

The hotel offered us breakfast for 12 euros but we brought food from Suriname to keep our cost down. One night we went to a Haitian/Creole/Guiana restaurant and it looked closed although the sign said it was open. We spied a passage way alongside the restaurant and noticed a lady selling takeaways. When we spoke to her she showed us a bell we needed to ring to get the doors opened to the restaurant. We were the only ones that came to eat.Quite strange really.

We enjoyed walking around the seaside areas and spending time in the shade enjoying the sea breeze. We watched some Frenchmen playing petanque and during a close call two of the men got out their measuring tapes and checked their distances from all angles. They were so serious about the game and they were pretty accurate with their throws so we guessed they must play frequently.

We called our grandson Tyler for his second birthday and he asked us to come out of the phone. He was so cute. When we showed him a banana he tried to grab it. He loves to give us a kiss on the screen.
     

One of the things we wanted to do in French Guiana was to visit the Guiana Space Centre but they were all booked out and the only space available was after we had left. It is a French and European spaceport. The European Space Agency used the spaceport to send supplies to the International Space Station. The place was chosen because it is close to the equator so the spinning earth can impart some extra velocity to the rockets for free when launched eastward and the lower stages of the rocket and debris cannot land on human habitations.We also wanted to visit the cultural museum but it had closed too. We didn't have much else planned during our stay as we were also waiting for my visa to be prepared in Paramaribo for Trinidad and Tobago.

A memorial to the slaves and the slave trade

It was my birthday while here so we went to a bistro restaurant for a meal. It was nice to have some fresh salads and delicious desserts.

There are many Laotians in French Guiana and they grow a lot of the vegetables for the market. On our last morning we were told to be ready for the minivan to the border
by 6 am. We got ourselves organised but ended up sitting n the minivan waiting for it to fill up and didn't leave until 10 am. We went the same way we had come and enjoyed watching our driver Magnifico talk non-stop switching from English to Spanish and Creole.