French Guiana

AIRVŪZ STAFF NOTE : Contributor Travel and Drones brings us this excellent drone video of French Guiana, an overseas department of France which lies on the eastern coast of South America, between tiny Suriname and giant Brazil. The video opens with shots of Saint Laurent de Maroni, FG's second-largest city. Starting at the :45 mark, you'll see Devil's Island, the notorious penal colony where the French army officer Alfred Dreyfuss was famously imprisoned in 1895, followed by shots of the capital city of Cayenne and the European "spaceport" at Kourou.

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Have you ever heard of Papillon? Well he visited this department of France in 1933 and stayed here most of his life(in Prison). quite a different visit then i did a few years ago. I followed part of his footsteps(at least according to the story) and visited Devil's Island (Île du Diable), which was a penal colony that operated in the 19th and 20th century in the Salvation Islands of French Guiana. Opened in 1852, the Devil's Island system received convicts from the Prison of St-Laurent-du-Maroni (star of the film). Just for your info, there is no proof that he stayed on Devils's island, the book and story seems to be stories made up or from fellow prisoners, but the islands were very idyllic. I also visited Kourou and joined a 3-4 hours tour of The Guiana Space Centre . It fulfills the two major geographical requirements of such a site: It is near the equator, so that less energy is required to manoeuvre a spacecraft into an equatorial, geostationary orbit. Rockets launch to the east to take advantage of the angular momentum provided by Earth's rotation. It has open sea to the east, so that lower stages of rockets and debris from launch failures are unlikely to fall on human habitations. Very interesting Best regards Travel and Drones