As part of a round-the-world trip visiting France’s overseas territories, Rosie Millard and her family spent a fascinating night deep in the rainforests of Guyane

 The pirogue, a long, shallow boat with an outboard motor, chugs on. And on. And on, through glassy water set about with miles of bright green plants, rushes, flowers and lilies. Enormous trees dip visible white roots far beneath the water’s surface. The trees rise up hundreds of metres above the swamp in a green mountain that goes on forever. Thin clouds of vapour circle their tops. Far away, we can hear the eerie laugh of a gibbon.

‘Alors,’ says Ondine from the stern of the boat, our glamorous (in a French rustic way, i.e. no make-up or bra) guide and pilot. ‘Les vaches du marais!’ To our right, large water buffaloes wade up to their necks in the clear water, casually chomping on the greenery. They low intermittently, causing minute brown and rose-coloured birds to scatter up in disarray. Weaver birds fly in and out of their gourd-shaped nests hanging from tall plants. Egrets cling to the rushes, peering at us beadily down needle-sharp bills.

Guyane is a sliver of South America perched above Brazil. It was grabbed by the French at some point in the seventeenth century in the mad search for the legendary city of gold, El Dorado, which was said to lie somewhere in the equally legendary range of the Tumuc-Humac Mountains, a plateau that leads down into the Amazon basin. The Dutch and the British were both chasing the same notional booty.

Several hundred years after Walter Raleigh turned up, it gradually became clear that clambering around the Tumuc-Humacs trying to spot El Dorado was probably not worth it. The dripping, boundless rainforest was full of lots of things; spiders, a thousand different mammals, three thousand species of tree. What it was not full of, however, was easily accessible gold. The governments of Britain and Holland eventually pushed off, but the French stayed, finding themselves saddled with a colony that was too treacherous to be mined, its land too wet and jungly to be planted with sugar, and its water too full of alluvial soil to be fished effectively.

So what to do with Guyane? The French chose to reinvent it. Firstly, they turned it into a huge depot for unwanted prisoners. More recently they have tried to shake off the legacy of the prison, and turn Guyane into a haven for eco-tourism and a centre for hi-tech adventures into space.

Assuaging the stain of Guyane’s shameful past might have been the catalyst for France to pour millions of euros into the Ariane space station, a commercial venture to send satellites into space, which is co-funded by the EU. It might also have been the prompt for France to look after Guyane’s millions of square kilometers of virgin rainforest responsibly, promoting eco-tourism and turning the forest into national parks. Only 250,000 people live in Guyane, a space one-sixth the size of France, and not many French people visit it. But the overriding sensation is that France belatedly wants to do the right thing in this corner of its empire.

It must be about 90 degrees in the sunshine. There is no shade in the pirogue. I notice that all the French eco-tourists, unlike us, are properly equipped with hats. We are all slathered in suncream, but it is so hot that it seems to just be sliding off our arms and legs. The men are all dressed in elegant green safari gear, and the women are all wearing white agnès b. linen. They are all doctors from Paris, it seems, having a bit of tourism on the back of a professional trip.

‘I’m so HOT,’ whimpers my eldest son Gabriel, nine, dipping his hand into the enticingly cool water.

‘Please don’t do that, darling,’ I say sharply. ‘Remember what Ondine said about crocodiles! Some of them are three metres long!’

‘Caiman, actually,’ he corrects me. ‘Spectacled caiman. Maybe we’ll see one tonight!’ We have been chugging along a wide waterway for about three hours, when the pirogue suddenly diverts down a slim channel. As we approach, Ondine explains that we are about to arrive at Kaw, population sixty, one of the remotest villages in Guyane. She tells us to be back in the pirogue in an hour. We gratefully leave the blistering heat and head for a coppice of trees, and shade.

I love the village. It is here that, beneath a small enamel sign reading ‘Agence Postale’, that I decide I have found the beating heart of France, in the form of a small yellow postbox. The box, as all proper French postboxes are, is marked POSTES and carries the insignia of la République française. Apparently a French postman turns up, by pirogue, once a week, on what must be the world’s most extreme postal round, to empty the yellow box and bring the people of Kaw their mail.

It’s clear that although the French postal system is here, not much else is. An abandoned shack is marked ‘Foyer Rural’. A wild field has a long abandoned football goal. Opposite the church, a cluster of Amerindian women are selling cakes and delicious almond bread. They clearly do this on a daily basis for the tourists. We discover a primary school on the corner of the street.

‘Well, kids, imagine going to school here,’ says Pip, gesturing towards the École Élémentaire Mixte. The wall outside is decorated with pictures of children holding each other’s hands, and a song that starts ‘Nous sommes les enfants de Kaw’, written in that same looping handwriting. Presumably inside, the class has been ploughing through ‘nos ancêtres les Gaulois’. Before they get onto Sartre, Montaigne and Camus. ‘That’s assimilation for you,’ says Pip.

Our hour is up. We get back onto the pirogue and continue down the waterways of Kaw. It starts to rain, very, very hard. It’s like we are moving through a massive, tepid power shower. Just as suddenly as they arrived, the sheets of rain switch off. We dry off in the sunshine and continue chugging down the river. Eventually, a vast boat, three storeys high with a giant arched roof, looms into view, sitting impassively on the river. This is our houseboat.

‘Alors,’ says Ondine, looping a rope from the pirogue onto a bollard. ‘Lunch will be served in forty minutes.’ She leaps off the boat and dives into the kitchen.

The children run upstairs, shouting with pleasure: ‘Hammocks! Hammocks!’ Both upper decks are strung with brightly coloured, striped hammocks. There are about thirty of them. The children jump on to them, and swing. They are filthy, sweaty and barefoot, but they are alive with the sheer joyous prospect of spending the night in a hammock on a breezy 40-foot high houseboat.

Ondine and her colleague Gabriel serve us lunch, which is delicious and welcome. It’s water buffalo stew, of course. The Parisian doctors crack open bottles of Bordeaux, which they knock back with abandon. Baguettes, presumably made from French flour, materialise from nowhere; Napoleon butter is produced. Pâté appears.

Suddenly, we hear a splash from the side of the boat. ‘Oh God,’ I think, running to the edge, ‘one of the children has fallen in!’ Well, not quite.

‘Oh come ON, Mummy! It’s lovely!’ shouts Honey, bobbing up and down in the water. ‘But what about the 3-metre long caiman?’ I think, smiling gingerly down at her.

After lunch I’m eventually persuaded that swimming in the Marais de Kaw is a good idea. Well, I’m never going to have the chance again. So I do it. The water is sweet and soft. It is deliciously refreshing, cool and clear. Yet after about 20 seconds of experiencing it, the notion of being pulled under the surface by something with teeth impels me to climb out.

That night, after a spectacular supper of chicken and couscous made by Ondine valiantly wearing a head torch (there is no power on the boat), and at least two bottles of rum, her assistant Gabriel takes us out for a midnight run in the pirogue. The moon is giant and brilliant, the Milky Way a long, wide smudge of white against a sky of black felt. We chug through beds of reeds.

After a while, we suddenly stop. Two red eyes are looking at us. There is a splash, a scuffle and suddenly Gabriel the guide is holding a small caiman, which is about 1 metre long. He gives it to our son Gabriel, who holds it up triumphantly. Presumably the 3-metre one has gone away for the weekend.

We spend a night with bats flying in and out of the room, and serenaded by the roar of bullfrogs alongside inebriated doctors snoring. The children, swinging alongside each other in striped hammocks, sleep deeply and sweetly. Next morning the sun rises through pinky pearl mist and light filters down through the myriad rivers and streams of the swamps. The doctors are up before us, with croissants, bowls of coffee, and presumably, colossal hangovers. Lucien, in his Death in Venice sunsuit, is playing at the feet of our guide, Gabriel. A black Guyanese, Gabriel is gentleness personified. Lucien loves Gabriel because he doesn’t bark at him in French. He also loves Gabriel because he has tamed a white heron, which comes on to the deck of the boat when he knocks gently on the wooden deck.

This morning, he is teaching Lucien how to do it. Lucien is sitting on his haunches, bottom half an inch off the ground, in that way that only the very young can manage. Gabriel kneels beside him and taps on the deck. Lucien follows suit, using the back of his knuckles just as Gabriel does.

Tap tap tap. Tap tap. Tap. Out of a cloudless sky, the heron descends. It folds its huge white wings into the shape of a teardrop on its back. It hops towards Gabriel, and then stands very still on thin, ebony legs. It folds its long white neck back like a hose. It has a sharp, yellow beak. A black, beady eye looks at Lucien. Gabriel moves away softly. Lucien is entranced. He looks back at the heron, and taps again. The heron comes a little closer. Suddenly, Gabriel reappears, holding a fishing line. He baits the hook at the end of the line with a little meat, left over from breakfast. He drops it into the clear water, and waits. Lucien waits. The heron waits.

All at once, Gabriel pulls up the line. At the end of it is what looks like a tiny silver piranha, about two inches long. Not the stuff of bad dreams, but let’s just say I’m glad one didn’t flick past my leg when I was having my 20-second swim.

‘Cousin of the piranha,’ says Gabriel. It is all mouth and eyes. He throws the flailing creature on to the deck. The heron follows it with its eye, and then stalks over to it. In one smooth movement, the heron picks up the fish and gulps it down its tubular white throat.

It cocks its head at Gabriel. Gabriel grins at Lucien. Lucien smiles back, and regards the heron.

 

From Bonnes Vacances by Rosie Millard, Summersdale, £8.99