K Travel Notes

   Last Saturday we have managed to visit the Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) , between Kourou and Sinnamary.  CNS and mock Ariane 5 rocket It was created in 1964 and counts for 750 km². This belongs to the CNES (France national space agency), and serves to several commercial clients, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). No human is flown to the space from here, only satellites. To this day missions for Ariane 5, Vega, and Soyuz have been sent to space. The partnership with Soyuz was supposed to end in 2023, but it was cut short due to their brilliant idea of invading a neighbor. On average, there are 9 launches per year, but agenda until 2030 seems to be more promising: if everything goes well, between 2025 and 2030 there may be 1 launch per month . As far as we are concerned, there should be the takeoff of Ariane 6 (the new project) between mid-June and mid-July 2024. We hope this will happen the first two weeks, so that we will still be here and be able...

  As planned, we prepared for the trip to Ìlet La Mère , just for the afternoon. The main risk is that the trip may be cancelled due to the sea conditions, but we were very hopeful. Arrived at the docks, right behind the commercial port of Cayenne, we had a feeling of being in an area where they invite you to, subsequently, remove one of your kidneys . Jokes aside, there were no people when we arrived, leaving us wondering whether we were on the right spot or not. We were, as a few minutes after our arrival other people on the trip arrived. We were invited on the boat by a huge guy, with Pacific traits. As for Pacific islanders, he turned out to be an amazing person, despite the size may frighten a little bit at first sight. He was very welcoming, explaining a lot of things about what to expect on the boat, what to be careful to, what to expect and not to do on the island. To be fair, one of the best guides that I have ever seen. We started our journey in the Mahury river, which is...

  The day before the visit at Îlet La Mère we decided to finish off the week at the beach , in order to start the weekend with the right vibes. That day was not a good one, until we got to the beach. I took off my shoes, enjoying the orange sand and trying to find a spot where to have the end-of-the-week aperitif. The view was amazing: the sunset was taking place behind the palm trees, on the direction we were heading, with a breeze still blowing from the ocean. Such a spectacle! After a couple of minutes a tall blonde guy with glasses told us that a turtle was actually laying eggs. So we hurried up, and after a kilometer we ended up in the same area where we were sat down the previous night. We saw a crowd in circle, some of them (unfortunately) even in the visual field of the turtle. We approached and tried to stay not too close and out of the turtle’s visual field.  It was huge! It was a Luth turtle , which is between 400 and 800 kilograms for a height of 165 centimeters. I...

  We have read about turtles laying eggs in French Guyana on the internet and were excited to see this. Talking with some flat mates we decided to join them. We left at sunset, off to Montjoly beach. They showed us some pictures and videos from previous night and it was great! Traveling through the residential outskirts of Cayenne at that time was quite an experience: the areas were rather calm , not sleeping quite yet, and few people going for a jog. I did not really expect. As soon as we arrived at the beach we got our torches out. It was very dark and windy. We could hear the ocean and its waves breaking into the sand. Yet, we could not really see it at first . Once our eyes got used to the darkness, I managed to distinguish the sky, the clouds, the sand, the ocean and the lather. I took off my shoes, in a sort of freedom gesture.  I realized almost immediately that crabs populate the beach, and the fear of stepping over one accompanied me all evening long. I forgot that t...

  First adventure out in Guyana! We were so excited! The path of Rorota , in the area of Rémire-Montjoly (east of Cayenne), was supposed to show us some monkey and some sloths. You have no idea how excited we were to see some sloths! The path is supposed to be easy, and take between 1 hour and 2 hours. It is good for families and kids . To be honest, I found it a bit more challenging than expected but it for sure due to the heat, at least in the inner part. In the part on the coast, which offers breathtaking views of the ocean and the islands, the breeze made more bearable.  Map of the "sentier du Rorota" The whole path, without the tract to Fort Diamant, took us two hours. The heat had us slowing down, but we also tried to spot sloths and monkeys. We did not see any of those. At least, what we saw we believe they were more termites nests. The best moment to see sloths is right after the rain has fallen: they go towards the top of the snakewood trees (bois canon in French) t...

  This post was supposed to be done earlier but, as you have read so far, a few things happened in between. By now a couple of weeks went by, so the right title would be "the first few weeks ". 😓 The first days were relatively easy, at least for me. I had the time to get the jet lag out of my body. I do know, though, that I struggle more when I travel east than west. I have noticed that I feel it more than I did when I was younger. It makes sense.  Normally, there are four hours difference between continental Europe and French Guyana. Just before departing, Europe switched to Summer daylight saving time (one hour ahead). This increased the gap to five hours. As our arrival was not expected (despite we confirmed that at least one month before), we had to improvise for the first night : we used our towels to cover the mattress and cover ourselves during the first night. Luckily we took extra towels, as we were expecting to swim often in the sea. Our personal flight neck pillo...

  I am writing with a couple of days delay. The last few hours were a little hectic . As you can imagine, no, I haven't been visited by Poseidon. 🐠 The following morning (18.04) the waters were relatively alright. The stream went back to its, and was relatively low. I thought the worst had passed, and it seemed like it. I could catch my breath. Stream even more overflown At 9:30 AM, on the other hand, it started rain cats and dogs. A lot of rain, in a very short period of time and all of a sudden. It lasted no less than two hours. Within one hour from the start the stream went back to being dangerous and it was even closer to the house than the day before. Back to paranoia! 😔 On the top of that, I miraculously spotted that our porch started to have water in it: the drain in front of it was filled with leaves and sand, for a while, and the cover was glued to the ground with concrete. The water started to increase but, luckily, it was not high enough to pass the windows and enter ...

Over the last night it rained all night long, with frequent storms in between. Rain, thunder, rain, and rain again. I barely slept because of all of this. This morning I woke up, went downstairs. I saw the message from the flat mates asking me to keep an eye on the small river. I opened the window and saw the swimming pool on the brink of flooding. My brain just told me at that moment " Good morning sunshine! ". I forgot, though, that two sides of the propriety have a stream running through. That one grew much more than the swimming pool. Our landlord cleans it regularly, but the neighbor where it heads next does not. This creates a bottleneck. The other neighbors, luckily, have cut the grass and cleaned their gardens as well over the last two weeks. This has, for sure, reduced considerably the amount of debris. Overflown stream Our house has either the walls of the house itself or some small walls to make it a bit higher and prevent flooding. The only issue is that within t...

  Since the beginning of the year and, especially, after the last month, this is the first time that both of us are excited about what to come! 🥳 The adventure started to gently sink in .   We were looking forward to the 9 hour flight, cocooned, with entertainment. We boarded and we got to our places. The staff was very friendly. We chose well: we had two seats on the Airbus A330, which has rows of two seats instead of three or four. We had our space, our privacy. Planning pays out. 😉 The flight was very good, not as many turbulences as expected over the Atlantic Ocean but it took a little longer due to headwinds. Two more negative points were definitely the presence of the Wi-Fi, which did not work so I could not carry out the admin work that I had planned, and the fact that there was no choice in terms of food. To this day, I have no idea what I ate. It was fairly decent but I was a bit disappointed. In addition, the screen had some troubles along the flight, requiring mul...

  The following day we got up very early. Both were grumpy, sleepy and hungry. The best cocktail for a great journey. 😁 For sure, we were not so communicative. Once arrived at the airport we managed to get to the check-in. Unfortunately,   in Geneva people are supposed to go all the way to the French side ( flight to Paris ) for check-in/baggage drop-off, and then go back to the Swiss side for the security check. Yaay! 😔 The latter one, was fully packed with people but it went relatively quickly. We did underestimate the amount of flights at 7AM. We grabbed a quick (and expensive) breakfast and headed to the gate. 🏃 View from GVA-CDG Time for take off! Take off that I missed because I was sleeping already, as usual. I have this superpower that gets me sleeping as soon as there is the engine startup. Then, I wake up mid-flight, right on time for food.  The 40 minutes flight to Charles de Gaulle went fast. I did wake up right on time for food. A madeleine and some wa...

  There is not way around: it was a messy period . In the month prior to the departure we had to find a new place to live back home, as well as move. It was very intense for two reasons: many tenants did not want us to move in with such a short notice (2-3 weeks after), and it was suspicious that we were looking for a place with so little time. Actually, we planned way in advance and we had a place. We were supposed to move in at the beginning of March, have time to settle, carry out all the bureaucracy , prepare the 3-month stay, and leave. The tenant resigned at the last moment for family/personal reasons. Yaay! More stress and rush! 😐 We managed to do everything in the weekend before our flight, which was on Tuesday after Easter.   All the bureaucracy could not be officially carried out, and it will be done upon our return among the mountains.  As understandable, this did not give us much time to plan our stay in French Guyana. One of the most important things is that...

 Hi there! Welcome to my blog called K Travel Notes . This is a space that I wanted to create for very long time but I did not have the time to do. I have collected most of my travel notes about several places I have visited and decided to digitalize them. It is a sort of experience container , for me to access it from everywhere. On the top of that I have decided to share it with whoever may be interested. I will try to make it as useful as possible as well. It will not be in chronological order, as I am currently writing my notes about my adventure in French Guyana . I have arrived here at the beginning of the month and have a few pages written already so I will start with them. It will be a sort of " live blogging ".  I could do this with video blogging but I am not really comfortable in front of the camera but it could be a next step. I may turn this into a podcast as well some time down the road, if it is interesting enough. A huge disclaimer: despite being relatively f...