johnkebab's VirtualTourist Home Page

Just got back from 1 months leave, I managed Amsterdam, Argentina (Iguazu, Buenos Aires and Ushuai), Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, the UK and Paris!! Not too bad methinks, I'll build the pages as soon as I've got time which will hopefully be next week some time.

In the mean time June is party month here in Guiane, because it's generally the time of year when everyone leaves, so happy days, the holiday (almost) continues.....

Woke up this morning, was reminded of how cool French Guyana is, kids are up to go to college in Cayenne at 0430 to get the bus, don't get back till 630-7ish, the kids that go to school in town are walking down the road with their bags at 0630, happy as you like. I've never been anywhere where I've seen that before, been here over 2 years and it only struck me today!!

At the end of October ever year there is a race in traditional canoes or pirogues, wooden made in a traditional style.

The aim of the race is to transport fire (I think this is to simulate the very early days of fire when it would be transported between villages, but I'm not sure) around a 4km course, which takes about 45 minutes, the course is run 3 times, not too sure what the winning team gets, but its fun to watch, more photos on my Kourou things to do page....

Well, last weekend I FINALLY got off my arse to go and see the Leatherback turtles at Awala, after watching Biarritz beat Toulouse on Saturday, we shot off up to St. Laurent du Maroni, had a nice dinner and stayed in the duty hotel, not too much partying though as we had an early start on Sunday to go to Awala-Yalimapo which is one of the major nature reserves in the world in relation to the conservation of leatherback, green and olive turtles, this time of year it is time for the Leatherback turtles to come up to the beach and lay their eggs, it was pretty amazing, the turtles are huge!

You can read all about it on my St.Laurent du Maroni page, things to do and travelogue, where there are more photos.

We just had our first earthquake since 1933! It measure 5.2 on the Richter scale and was my first one, its strange that its the first one and the epicentre was in the country too, there are no tectonic plates near here and they think it was something to do with the Amazon.

The CSG is based here partly because of such low tectonic activtiy, still I guess one every 70 years isn't too bad......

One thing I have to apologise for is the large number of countries visited and not a large number of photos or info, this, (and I'm being genuine), is due to the fact that my photos taken were all digital, the vast majority of which (for nices places like Tahiti, at least) were put on a hardrive on a work computer that went flying, and then got put in the bin before I could get the hardrive out, lost forever, which is really damn irritating.

Then hardrive 2 came along and failed, in Nigeria, so no real instant support to save it BUT I still have it and I intend to see how much data can get pulled off of it, but its V. Expensive to do as far as I've seen, so I need to save or think if it's really worth it.

For example, this riveting photo I managed to find of when I was in Antwerp, whilst working on a boat there. I aint no David Bailey.

Every year around March is the beloved Marathon de l'espace, 42km race for individuals or 5 x 8km race for teams with a 2km team finish. The route is mostly on a straight road up to the space centre and back down again, so not hugely interesting, but straight.

Temperatures reach over 30 degrees celcius and humidity is 95%, its normally pretty nails stuff, but this year it bucketed it down all day!! So we all got wet, but no heat injuries, yay us.

I ran it as part of a team (me rugby team), and we didn't do too badly, earned the beer after I can say.

OK, you can laugh, I'm back left.

It's always strange to go back home, it takes quite a while to get used to going into the huge supermarkets and seeing all the things on the shelves, so much choice shopping became a bit of a nightmare, but it was good to see me friends again and the Army beat the Navy at rugby too, so happy days.

I also got to go and see my friends in Sardegna, I haven't seen them for about 3 years and one of them had been killed in Iraq in that time, so although there was lots of catching up, there was also a few poignant moments thrown in too.

This is a photo of my friend Silvio who was among 19 Italian soldiers killed in Nasyriah by a suicide bomber, lets hope this mess ends soon so that as few people as possible have to lose friends and loved ones.