April 11, 2025
DEVIL'S ISLAND, FRENCH GUIANA - Don't know that this port counts - we never got off the ship - just a sail by!
I feel like I saw this Island ! We watch the 2.5 hour movie Papillon from 1973 with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman the night before ( it was 2.5 hours I will never get back - not a real action thriller and ending fizzled out, like there budget got removed! It was a true story - so gave us good insight to prison there. Sadly the water was too choppy for our rented tenders to safely board passengers. They tried several times all morning, will no luck. So we had to simply sail by. A big disappointment for a lot of us who had watched the movie in anticipation.
There are actually 3 islands here called the Salvation Islands of French Guiana. Devil's Island is the one in the back behind the other two.
Easter turned out to be a travel day for Bosco and I as we were extremely limited in when we could be seen by the Australian Border Control to disembark from the Ship, for a scuba diving adventure in Raja Ampat that I have had reserved, for over 18 months! We flew from Perth to Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia on Easter afternoon.
I have been really excited to get to Fremantle / Perth for my first time. I have had a few friends live here over the years and I have a second cousin, James Murphy, who I have only ever spoken too briefly, over the last 35 years and that I would love to meet in person. Jim is the older brother of Paul who I met up with in Melbourne a few weeks ago.
Greetings from FREMANTLE or FREO as the locals call it! Getting here took a long week at Sea, as we hid out and dodged wave surges from two cyclone systems. Our departure from Adelaide was timed to carefully avoid the path of Cyclone Narelle and we hugged the southern coastline of Australia, in the shallow waters of the Great Australian Bight . Later in the week we sheltered near Point Culver, before taking the turn and heading North along the western coastline.