My French Guiana Adventure: Day 8

The trip back home from French Guiana was wild.

I always like to arrive at the airport super early. There are maybe six other passengers in the entire airport when I get there. I walk around the lobby to look at model rockets.

French Guiana is an international airport, but not a busy one. Today, there are just two flights out. The Island Hopper to Miami, and the direct flight to Orly. I want to reiterate that 60% of the cocaine in Mainland France transits through this airport. You do the math. They check my body and my luggage for cocaine residue.

I board the plane. Uneventful.

It is empty. Then, all of a sudden, a bunch of people get on all at once. Too many, in fact. 23 passengers on board do not have boarding passes and are not authorized to fly. It takes two hours to figure out who needs to be kicked off the plane. The crew is professional and memorable. I'm sure this has happened before. The male flight attendant reminds me of NBC News anchor Lester Holt. He is very serious, except I can see a seashell bracelet on his wrist. The female flight attendant is very rigid and very French. Her eyeglass frame is very artsy. One side is a rectangle, the other side is an oval. There is a third person. He is sitting at the front of coach. Blonde guy with wrap around shades that American cops wear. He is definitely law enforcement. During the two hour headcount fiasco, he is standing in the aisle looking towards the back of the plane, ready to throw down.

We are late for our connection on one of the islands. I do not get a chance to partake in another large shot of rum. All administrative hurdles are knocked down as everyone going to Miami is allowed to bypass security to get on the next plane. We run across the tiny airport. The catch is, we all have to stay together. But a French Karen insists that she leave us to smoke a cigarette. We say she can't. She walks away and smokes anyway. The entire second plane waits for her to finish smoking.

On the final leg, I decide to load up on the complimentary wine. We hit some serious turbulence, and this is the result.

Home sweet home.

As I land in Oakland, I get this text from my wife. The kids are at the drug store getting their passport photos taken. I hope with all my heart that they get to experience travel adventures like mine.

FIN.

My French Guiana adventure: Day 4

Today, I visit a spaceport! But first, breakfast. It seems like no brick and mortar eatery in French Guiana opens before 10:30. My tour is 40 minutes away from my hotel and it starts at 7am. Where am I going to eat?

Fortunately, I see a few blue collar guys hanging around this red Peugeot van in Kourou, so I make a u-turn and order a sandwich.

My 5 euro sandwich comes with beef, egg, and cheese. It's super filling and I cannot finish it before the tour, it's so big.

I had assumed the three-hour all-French tour was going to have us walk around a museum and peek into the command center. I had no idea we were going to be on a bus driving all over the spaceport! Our driver is Polynesian and our tour guide is super accommodating. Even though I am the only non-French speaker, she would come up to me after each stop and explain everything in English.

The facility is expansive. Because of French Guiana's proximity to the equator, it takes 25% less fuel to launch a rocket into space. The main rockets in use are Ariane 5 (soon to be 6) and Vega. Soyuz is no longer used since the Ukraine invasion. France and Russia have a long space friendship. The first French astronaut was sent up in a Soviet rocket in the 1980s. 

Security is tight. Army, navy, air force, police, Foreign Legion. They all protect the spaceport. 

The first stop is at an Ariane rocket launchpad. And our bus drives through it! There are two sets of parallel railroad tracks that are used to slowly transport the rocket from the hangar to the pad.

The rocket flames go down a hole, through that yellow tube, and away from the launchpad. That's a water tower next to the tube.

The rain stops briefly and we get out of the bus. This is a shot of the launchpad we just drove through.

The food at the spaceport is catered by Sodexo.

We then climb an elevated bunker where people can observe Vega launches.

The gray building in the background is the Soyuz launchpad. Supposedly, it looks totally different from the Ariane and Vegas launchpads because of the Soviets' different philosophy. We can't get closer because it has been completely shut down.

A sloth!

Here is the control room. VIPs and guests sit in comfortable lecture hall-style seats behind the windows.

There is a Lego model of the control room and lecture hall.

The four top VIPs, including a representative from France, sit here. She is the one who counts down from ten before blastoff. That orange phone is for emergencies, such as when an errant rocket needs to be destroyed.

I return to Cayenne, stock up on provisions for my upcoming road trips, and have dinner at a Creole-Haitian-Vietnamese place. It's just me and a table of 20 hot cops. I order a punch, thinking it's like sangria. It's actually a local specialty that you make yourself at your table. It's just rum, cane sugar syrup, and lime.

For my entree, I order stew. They have chicken, beef, fish, and pakira. Not knowing what pakira is, I order it. It's skunk pig.

Tomorrow, I drive 300 kilometers to the Suriname border.

My next solo trip will be to Little Diomede

I am back from French Guiana! I will be posting about my experience shortly. Of course, as soon as I returned, I started thinking about my next trip. I was thinking Marquesas in the South Pacific, Paraguay, the Aleutian Islands....

Over the Memorial Day long weekend, I rewatched Michael Palin's Full Circle on YouTube. The 1997 series had him traveling around the edge of the Pacific. He started at Little Diomede Island. It's in the Bering Strait and two miles away from Big Diomede, which is Russian. Also, the International Date Line separates the two islands.

The plan will be to fly to Nome on an Alaskan Airlines 737. This will be the easy part. Then, I will have to take a Pathfinder helicopter to the Little Diomede. I love trip planning.

I'm going to French Guiana!

I can't believe it.

I will be flying Air France's once-weekly Island Hopper. From Miami, it stops in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and finally, Cayenne. Port-au-Prince used to be a stop, but Air France no longer serves Haiti.

The plan is to stay at a colonial era hotel in Cayenne and go on day trips.

The itinerary:

• Minibus or shared taxi to Suriname border
• Minibus or shared taxi to Brazil border
• Visit Cacao in the jungle; it's a Hmong village full of former refugees
• Space center tour; I just got a ticket for a three-hour tour
• Devil's Island

Anatomy of a Hellfire missile

Those poor Korean cars!

The Battle of Midway

I was reading about China's latest aircraft carrier and thought about the Battle of Midway. I knew it was an epic clash involving battleships and planes, but I did not know the details. This video succinctly explains everything that took place.

Top Gun Maverick

This is an excellent movie. The actors were filmed inside real flying F/A-18s. USA! USA!

Japan to allow exports of jets fighters and missiles to 12 countries

The countries are:

1. India
2. Australia
3. Vietnam
4. Thailand
5. Indonesia
6. Malaysia
7. Philippines
8. U.S.
9. U.K.
10. Germany
11. France 
12. Italy

And I had no idea about the existence of the Mitsubishi F-2!

Another way to capture rockets

There's more than one way to skin a cat. This company shoots smaller (than SpaceX) rockets into space and lets a helicopter catch it on the way down. It semi-successfully did this recently. The helicopter caught the rocket but had to let it fall into the ocean because it was making the helicopter too unstable.

Tomica JAL airport set

I bought this new-in-box set from an eBay seller in Japan. Old world charm and craftsmanship!