French Guyane

We stayed in the town of Kourou at the the Hotel des Roches. No, not the roach hotel. Hotel on the rocks. It is situated on the point of land where the river enpties into the ocean. By the way, every river and the ocean here is milk chocolate colored. Tons of silt. The motel and the town are very modern and clean (best hotel so far) Most everything you would want is available and several you would not want (McDonalds, etc)

The reason is that Kourou is the center for the european space agency, all their launch pads, control centers and assembly areas are all here.
Trivia - it is much more efficient to launch to space from near the equator than further north. So every launch has foreign dignatories and polititions, etc who are involved in that satellite or mission. When you are showing off, you clean house and make everything look good. The 20 of this month (October, 2011) they are blasting off a satellite with a soviet Soyous rocket so the motel had bunches of Russian speaking folks.

But try to get a waitress to explain the french only menu.