Discover French Guiana

French Guiana is France on the shoulder of South America: an overseas department and region, since December 2015 a single territorial collectivity, an outermost region of the European Union with the euro for currency, and the only territory on the American mainland still under a European state. It covers some 83,500 square kilometres of land between Suriname across the Maroni and Brazil across the Oyapock, 98.9 per cent of it forest, much of it primeval, and had 293,996 people on 1 January 2023, fewer than four to the square kilometre, about half of them in and around Cayenne. The interior rises only to Bellevue de l'Inini at 851 metres; the coast is 320 kilometres of mangrove and mud; the climate is equatorial, more than 330 millimetres of rain a month from December to July and a dry season from August to November, sheltered from cyclones by its latitude.

The Kalina, Lokono, Palikur, Teko, Wayampi and Wayana were here before Europeans passed shortly before 1500; the French founded Cayenne in 1643 and kept it, with Dutch and Portuguese interruptions; the Kourou expedition of 1763 killed some 6,000 settlers in a year and gave the Salvation Islands their name; the penal colony ran from 1852 to 1953 and sent more than 80,000 prisoners, most of whom never came home, Dreyfus and Papillon among the survivors; departmental status came on 19 March 1946, the space centre at Kourou in 1968, Hmong farmers from Laos in 1977, and ten thousand Maroon refugees from Suriname in the 1980s. French is official, Guianese Creole the lingua franca, and six Amerindian and four Maroon languages are spoken.

For the visitor it is Europe's spaceport and Europe's largest national park in the same department: the Guiana Amazonian Park over 41 per cent of the land, the Salvation Islands and their prisons 14 kilometres off Kourou, the Camp de la Transportation at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, leatherback turtles nesting at Awala-Yalimapo from March to July, caimans in the Kaw marshes, the world's longest Carnival from Epiphany to Ash Wednesday, and pirogues up the Maroni. Yellow-fever vaccination is compulsory, 112 or 15 is the emergency number, and both advisories rate the territory as needing normal precautions.

Do I need a visa?

The rules are France's: EU citizens need only a passport or ID card, and the UK and Canadian advisories say up to 90 days without a visa; others should check with a French consulate. Everyone needs a yellow-fever certificate.

How do I get there?

Nonstop from Paris on Air France or Air Caraïbes to Félix Éboué airport, 16 kilometres from Cayenne; from the Antilles via Fort-de-France; from Brazil weekly from Belém or Fortaleza, or over the Oyapock bridge; from Suriname by pirogue across the Maroni.

What currency?

The euro.

Can I visit the space centre and the prison islands?

Yes: the tourism committee lists both among the essentials, and the islands are evacuated on launch days because they lie under the rockets' trajectory. Prices are not stated here because the operators' pages did not answer.

When are the turtles?

Leatherbacks nest at Awala-Yalimapo between March and July and the hatchlings emerge about two months later.

When is the dry season?

July to November, with September and October the sunniest; the heavy rains run from December to June with a sunny break in March.

What is the emergency number?

112, or 15 for an ambulance.