It was incongruous — we were sailing along the heat of the equator off the South American coast, but now we were officially in the European Union. France, in fact!
This was French Guyana, a French territory between Brazil and Suriname. 7 euro coffees, French gendarmes keeping the peace, everything is very tidy. The European Space Agency’s spaceport is based here — it is favorable to launch satellites into space close to the equator.
We motored the last 8 hours since the wind died, and dropped anchor at Ile Salut (ironically named Salvation island, as we’d soon learn). Gosh it felt lovely to sit at anchor and look at the tropical foliage swaying behind us. Yet this pretty cluster of 3 islets couldn’t hide its dark history.
Watch our reel:
After all, the next door island betrayed its past with a lovely name, “Devil’s Island”. It is infamous as a harsh penitentiary in the late 19th century, which featured terrible conditions of malnutrition, torture, and disease.
A memoir from a falsely convicted Frenchman made this prison famous, and was turned into the movies “Papillon” (both in 1973 with Dustin Hoffman/Steve McQueen, and a modern version in 2017 ) chronicling his multiple escape attempts through shark-infested waters.
Landing at Ile Salut and doing short hikes for a few days was a wonderful break from the long sail to the Caribbean. It is now a national park with clear signage and excellent trails. Imposing colonial buildings like the old hospital and prison administrative center were surrounded by huge old trees. Several magnificent peacocks strutted about.
Walking around the ruins of the prison was a melancholic experience. Closed in 1953, it is now being overcome by the trees. Thick roots and rebellious trunks are carving their way straight through concrete walls of the solitary confinement cells. Like the trees are trying to reset a century of ungodly abuse of humans with their natural transformative power.
These sobering moments of reflection remind us how lucky we are. Standing on the same land — but we are comfortably sailing along the coast with our family, while other humans who also stood on this land suffered (or committed) unspeakable atrocities . For all the confusion and injustice and violence in our world, if Ile Salut is a small example of the general trend, then things are getting better. Fingers crossed.
This mental cold shower brought us newfound appreciation aboard the boat. The stark contrast between this sad past and on our own trivial woes — like having to repair the toilet pumps yet again, sweaty and annoying and foul as it may be— shifts our perspective so that we’re now unable feel that tendency to complaint. Rather we just feel immense gratitude that this is the small cross we have chosen to bear.
We toil to prepare Nesi for the next push of the trip. The weather looks poor — not terrible, but nothing good for the next two weeks. We decide to carry on, pushing our way straight north to Trinidad, the southernmost island in the Caribbean. It’ll be a 4-5 day trip. We’ll see what the equatorial convergence zone has in store for us.