Devil's Island is in a group of 3 islands which sit 6 miles off the coast of French Guyana. It was used as a French penal colony from 1850 until 1959! It was made famous by a book then the 1973 film entitled "Papillon" starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. Because of extreme currents and sharks it was considered a "no escape" prison. Nearly 80,000 prisoners arrived on the island, approximately 30,000 ever left.
Devil's Island has no landings, so we were tendered onto Iles Du Salut, the largest of the 3 islands. It was a beautiful but hot sunny day. We walked up an old road to the top of the island where there is a small hotel. Also in that area were a church and several old buildings, once part of the prison. Behind one of the buildings was an old cemetery. We walked around that to a different part of the road. There were small monkeys in the trees that were looking for handouts. Several people were feeding them even though we were told not to. They were very cute. The road led back up to the hotel, so we walked around that to some old stone stairs down.
Once down at the bottom, we finally found the path that would take us all the way around the island. The water was a beautiful blue and really warm. Too bad we couldn't swim. The path was fairly shaded, the island was very lush with foliage and palms. Our walk around took about 30 minutes, not a very large island. We returned to the ship at around 2, time enough for a swim in the back pool then to get ready for dinner.
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