Cayenne

Understand

The city was founded in 1643 by the French and was part of the Dutch, English and Portuguese colonial empire during the following century. Today a third of the department's inhabitants live in Cayenne. Downtown is small and the houses are typically Caribbean.

Although it looks on some maps like the city is surrounded by open water and would have a waterfront promenade, in fact it's surrounded by a swamp of tall mangrove trees, and the ocean isn't visible from the downtown except from certain high points or long piers. The beaches are located outside of the town proper, in the suburbs.

On Sundays, almost everything is closed. If you arrive on a Sunday, the only thing to do on your first vacation day is walking around in an almost deserted city. However, there are still a few Chinese-owned grocery stores open in the downtown, and there may be food trucks open in the palm tree park (Place des Palmistes)

In 2019, the city was home to 66,000 people.

Get around

Cayenne has a public bus network of five lines. The fare is €1,10. Your other options are car, taxi, foot or bike.

See

thumb|Place des Palmistes. thumbnail|Fort Diamant thumb|House of the Fa Kiao Kon So association

Do

thumbnail|Touloulous There are sand beaches in the eastern part of the Cayenne area, and the sea is good for surfing. The water is rarely, if ever, clear enough for snorkeling, but is often more green/blue than in the neighboring countries of Suriname and Guyana (the whole region tends to have brownish seawater due to the large amount of mud coming down through the many rivers).

Buy

For souvenir shopping head for the Trois Fontaines shops and other shops in the downtown. Good souvenirs are objects carved out of wood and exotic objects of art.

Eat

thumbnail|Market in Cayenne The restaurants of Cayenne reflects the ethnic mosaic of the Guyanese society; you will find Creole, French, Chinese, Lebanese and Javanese restaurants here.

Drink

thumbnail|Night view of the city hall Except for the carnival weeks, the nightlife isn't as wild as in many other Latin American destinations. There are some nice bars in Cayenne downtown. Nightclubs are generally located in the periphery of the city.

Sleep

Good hotels exist, but they can be relatively expensive.

Go next

From Cayenne you can relatively easy get to other parts of the department or to the neighbouring countries overland. Kourou boasts a space centre and the Devil's Island archipelago. To get a taste of the rainforest of remote inner Guiana, you can take a domestic flight for instance to Saül (or if a flight isn't in your budget, you can see a lot of rainforest along the side of the highway on the drive to the Brazilian border). Cacao is an Asian village in the jungle populated by Hmong people transplanted from Laos.