Do you always wanted to visit the Amazon rainforest, but you dont know from where to reach it? Take a deep read, Saül might be the key to achieve your dream 🙃
Most people think about reaching the Amazon, by Brazil, Colombia or Peru. But there's a small country, covered by 95% of the Amazon rainforest. That country is French Guiana an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France.
Reaching Saül ✈️
From Cayenne national airport, you can take a 40 minutes flight from Air Guyane, that takes about 17 people to Saül. This is a very small airplane and therefore the trips need to be booked in advance, depending on the season, but preferably 1 to 2 months in advance. The prices are around 140 € for a round trip.
The trip is a wonderful experience, since the plain doesn't fly too high, and if the whether is fine, you'll be amazed of seeing the rainforest just below your feet.
As soon as you arrive, there are two ways of reaching the village of Saül. You can either pay for a quad to take you there, or go by feet. By taking the second option, it will take around 20 minutes of walk in the middle of the jungle. But don't worry, everything is clearly flagged, even in your worst days you won't get lost easily 😅. And this applies for all the other trails around Saül.
The village of Saül 🛖
The origins of this village date from the 20th century. People from the Antillean islands and mostly from Saint-Lucia, came to this corner of the world to exploit gold. And the village gets its name from the surname of one of its gold miners. At that time there were no flight connections, so people used to reach it by the Mana River.
It covers an area of 44,700 hectares, and has only about 100 inhabitants. Among them, Creoles, Hmong, Brazilians and metros (name given to the people from France, métropole).
Nowadays, Saül is a great attraction for ecotourism and adventurers, even though there are still some gold miners in the area.
The village is quite small, and you won' t find a lot of activities beside engaging on trails, read a book or chatting with other people. Internet connection it's possible in certain guest houses, but as soon as you get a little bit further, you're disconnected, and that's how you take the most of this place.
Places to eat are not much, you must send an email to make a reservation to eat in some restaurant, or either pass during the day and knock at the person's door to book your table. Since there are not a lot of people, and the tourists are limited, they will only open if it is worth it. Saying that, be prepared to take a lot of food with you, if you're staying a good amount of days.
The prices at the restaurants can be quite expensive (around 40 € per person) and the grocery store doesn't have much to offer and you can clearly see the inflation on the prices. Also, you will not find any vegetable or fruit markets. Maybe some locals will be able to give you some delicious bananas, if the monkeys haven't already stolen them 😁.
The trails 🦧
Below you can see a map of the most common trails in Saül. Five of them are flagged, and those are the ones that tourists usually do. Among these, there are three long ones and two small ones.
For the most adventurous, there are also non-flagged trails, that can take several days. It is highly advised to hire a guide for this purpose.
Sentier Roche-Bateau
I will only mention the trails we did. Maybe in a near future I will cover the rest of them.
This trail takes around 5 to 6 hours to do, and it is mostly flat, so don't expect it to be hard even though it takes some time. The nature is precious, and even beside the flora's density, the sun reaches our feet and lights up the path.
Expect to see a lot of animals around these trails, such as wild boars, snakes, birds, monkeys, the list is infinite. Take a look at some of our friends.
At one point, I was an inch away from putting my feet on the snake above. It's fascinating to see how easily they can hide in the surrounding nature. Not so fascinating to know, later on, that this is one of the most poison snakes in the Amazon 😝. However, they are not agressive according to some data. This specie is also very rare to see, most of the snakes tend not to be poison or agressive, there is probably a list of 2, 3 that we might need to take special attention in this region.
Beside one or another snake, and some insects, the fauna is not dangerous in French Guiana, even the mighty jaguar, spotted from time to time, doesn't care about human beings, and prefers to be away of our smell.
Sentier Gros-Arbres
This day was threatening rain, a lot of it as usual. But we did the trail anyway, it was a small one. Nonetheless, we are not able to avoid the rain, and at some point we had to accelerate our steps.
Small but precious, this trail is full of very high trees. These huge guardians were watching on us all the way.
Half way of the path, we started hearing a very impressive noise, like a growl, and the adrenaline started kicking. We thought about every kind of animal that could make that noise, and one of our guesses, was the Alouatta aka singe hurleur in french (screaming monkey). Later one we were able to confirm our guess.
Sentier Mont de la Fumée
This trail is harder than the others, since there is a lot of climbing. In addition, it gets dark easily, which makes it quite murky.
Once reaching the top, we can have a beautiful view over the rainforest, and the monkeys like altitude, so they join you to contemplate the view.
During this trail I heard and saw glimpses of animals that I was not able to identify, but one was quite shocking to me. I spotted an Alouatta, the screaming baboon, about 15 feet from me. He screamed intensively, while getting away from my sight. I tried to grab my camera, while frozen, but I was not able to catch a clear photo. At that moment, I had mixed feelings, an adrenaline rush followed by a profound moment of joy, which had me smiling big for the rest of the trail.
Last Notes ✏️
Respect the nature and it will respect you, that's probably why the gold digging is less and less in Saül. Being in this place, is probably an experience that one can only have once in is lifetime. One spends so much time detached from nature, that we tend to forget how small we are in this world. Coming here, makes us think differently afterwards.
Here we aren't anything, here we aren' t better, here we only make part of this beautiful painting, that is nature itself
Bring a notebook, write about what you see, what you feel, what you smell, what you hear, and bring it back to society. When you feel down, take that same notebook, and remember what you are.
References
● https://www.guyane-evasion.com/cap-sur-saul/
● https://reporterre.net/Saul-le-village-amazonien-qui-dit-non-a-l-or