In with the adventists, out with South America

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Trip Start Jun 27, 2007 Previous
Entry Trip End Sep 14, 2007

  Cayenne, Guyane, French Guiana
Thursday, September 13, 2007

I arrived quite late in Cayenne with the adventist preacher and his wife, and they helped me look for a hotel within my budget (as little as possible). We soon found somewhere for 20 euros just a few blocks for the main square which looked perfectly clean and acceptable just above quite a lively bar / restaurant. I thanked them effusely, assuring them I would consider adventism if I ever had a spiritual epiphany.
So, I was finally in my final stop, Cayenne, a place I had pointed to on the map and to which all my roads had led. It was strange to feel that I already had one foot in Europe and in a way this was an ideal place to make that transition back into the European way of life - a way of life I envisaged I would be immersed in for the foreseeable future. I would miss South America, the two and a half years and countless backpacking miles that I had clocked up taking in every country on the continent, most several times. Yet it was time to move on, I was tired of being broke and wondering where my next meal would come from.
With that I headed downstairs and out in to the street where I picked up some creole food from a food van just off the main palm-tree dotted square. There was little activity going on in the capital that night, although it seemed that this would be fairly typical.
The following morning I woke up and had a few hours to kill until I had to head to the airport. I wandered around the town, much like a provincial French departement capital with the town hall and local shops and a lazy pace of life. I wandered up a hill to where an old French colonial fort once stood with views out over the mouth of the estuary, and then down again past brightly coloured gallic houses, reminiscent of those found all across rural France. I headed to the sea wall where I looked out across the muddy and swampy coast towards the Atlantic a mile out. I found a cheap lunch in a creole restaurant before grabbing my backpack and heading to where the public buses head to the airport. I had to wait for it to fill up before it rattled off through the suburbs, stopping off at every street corner until finally it took the highway out to the modern and air-conditioned airport.
Without a hitch the plane to Paris climbed up above the endless expanse of jungle below and out to sea.

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