French Guiana Off The Beaten Path

La Counamama River

by johnkebab

Just outside Iracoubou is La Counamama river, basically the sea inlet turns into 2 rivers, the Iracoubu and La Counamama. On the river is the Cemetiére du Péres, where some 100 odd monks are buried, sent to French Guyana during the French revolution in the 1700s, 200 turned up and 1 month later 64 were left, not sure how many died after the first month, possibly all! Anyway, every year a ceremony is held there, its quite an interesting story and out of the way to visit.The river then continues until it branches into the Sinnamary Branch and Iracoubu branch, which we found impassable as there were too many trees blocking the entrances.It takes about an hour and a half to get to where the river breaks into 2, and you have to negotiate quite a few fallen trees, beware, the river changes daily, trees are constantly falling and where there wasn't an obstruction before, there may well be...