Getting out of French Guyane with no Euro’s left!

 

Day 31 (300 km)

  

       Woke up around 6 am and this day could change the whole trip if we cannot fix Scotty’s radiator/pump problems, so we went to the industrial area, where a motorcycle repair shop supposed to be and there wasn’t, so we decided to shoot for the capitol Cayenne and try to keep the engine of running hot, so an hour later we hit the capitol. Some fellows showed us the mechanic shop ad it was actually a Kawasaki dealer. The service department says 49 euro an hour and told us they got time next week Wednesday! So we left and decided to get the hell out of French Guyane and try to reach the Brazil border.

Bridge to nowhere

      Then finally luck start getting in our favor and ran into a Frenchman in a gas station, who was interested in our bikes and start asking about our trip. After mentioning him our problem, he said follow me and 2 minutes later we were at a professional repair centre, just for radiators  and introduced us to the owner, who was a bike rider as well and he said, he would fix  it. I took the radiator off quick , he cleaned the inside, which was clogged up from the “Stopleak”, I put in 2 days ago, put it on the test bank, found the hair crack caused by vibration, welded it and 2 hours later we left for the 4 hour ride to the border, everything running perfect again. He didn’t charge a cent!  Nice fellow he was.

    The trip to the border was through a very nice rain forest on a new curvy road with no traffic and did not pass a single house alongside the road and just before 6 pm reached St George the border town on the French side of the river, got our exit stamp from the Gendarmerie and looked at the brand new built bridge over the river to Brazil, but were not allowed to use it, because it was a bridge to nowhere! There was not a road yet on the Brazil side, so had to go to the waterfront a few km back and try to get a small boat across.  They carried us for 35 euro each in 2 trips across and around 7pm we both were on the other side and went to the nearest town to look for an hotel, so that we could process our immigration and bike papers the next day.

Papillion Day

 Day 30 (0 km) 

 

      Today, we played the tourist and decided to do the trip to Ile Royal, which was a penal colony where the French locked up his unwanted prisoners and political adversaries in the 18 hundreds, up till the last one left in 1953 and the institution was closed, It became famous through a convict Henri Charrierre (Papillion), who wrote a book and actually escaped from the island, he was locked up on. Later the book got filmed with the main character played by Steve McQueen. 

     To get to the islands we had to take a $ 60.00 one hour boat ride to the 3 small islands, walked around the old buildings with their interested stories displayed in and 4 pm the boat returned to Kourou again from where we had to walk to our $ 200.00 room, because there are no taxis in this place! We reached 9 pm after making a few stops to get a beer.

French Guiana, just like France, but double the price!

Day 29 ( 213 km)

     Day started out bad, we had 2 dead batteries, the good part was we discovered it around 8 am, so we still had 6 hours to fix it before the ferry left for French Guiana.

Scotties was short of acid so after buying a bottle, we got his started, I decided to buy a new one, but they only had 12 amps instead of 14 what I used to have and it said me back $ 100.00 US, but on the end I could get one in this border place, what was not more as an hole, completely run by Chinese as mostly anything is done in Suriname and the Guyana's! just around we had the bikes running again, but Scotty had some problems with losing cooling water, so he bought some Stopleak to stop the leak.

    Got on the ferry for 15 euro each and an half an hour we where in France, they stamped our passport and I guess we could stay for ever now as an European citizen, asked the guy from customs about the bikes and all he asked for if our papers are in order and after we said yeah, he told us good luck on your trip to Brazil. 

No paperwork was necessary, so theoretically the bike could stay as long as we want! 

   We took off, but the bad luck started again and Scotty's engine was overheating, I believe the water is not circulating and the fan is not kicking in, but as long as we were driving under 80 km an hour, the temperature stays just under the red and that is after dark when it is cool. The moment we idling the temperature shoots up, so we have to take care of this tomorrow.

We ended up in Kordou around 9 pm, this is where the European space shuttle program takes place and our first shock was the gas price $ 10.00 a gallon or 1.76 Euro a liter, then the hotel was $200.00 a night, so we have to get the hell out of this country fast, even McDonald hamburger combo was $ 15.00