Auberge du Mahury

One Week-end at l'Auberge du Mahury. We had a great time, quiet, good spirit and a very good host: Valentin.

Departure from La Levee.

All set for the night.

In the hammocks.

View of Stoupan.

Gros Yeux. Big Eyes fish.


Time to go back, Valentin our host is driving the Pirogue. We are leaving the Auberge.

Pripri de YiYi

Pripri de YiYi is a natural reserve 2 hours from Cayenne. Ideal for bird watching and caymans. We saw quite a few looking for the red eyes with our canoe. We could approach them at less than a meter, fortunately we haven't seen any big ones.

Swamps of Kaw

We stayed 2 days on the Swamps of Kaw, a nature reserve South of Cayenne. The reserve is famous for it's birds and the black caiman. You can see a Cacique, an Urubu noir and Urubu a tete jaune.

Schneider's cayman

While helping Eddy on the Jaguar program, checking for the photographic traps. I almost steppped on a Grey cayman, it's a smooth-fronted cayman wich can be quite aggressive if disturbed. It can be find in the forest and quite far from the water.
It's the second time that I work on the Jaguar conservation program, we have some photographic traps wich are essential to evaluate the number of Jaguars in the area. The traps are deep in the amazon forest, we stay 5 days and walk around 18 km per day to check the cameras and collect the films, we cover an area of 120 km2. So far the results are good, we are trying to evaluate the impact of human activities (pollution, hunting, gold digging, deforestation etc...) on some emblematic species in the amazon basin.

Eddy is also an entomologist, he just found a rare specy of longicorn, he's extremely excited, this specy only hatch in september and is mythic in French Guiana. I only had my phone camera with me unfortunately the longicorn doesn't show very well.

With Eddy I have learn quite a lot on beettles, we have put some insect traps on the forest and collected some longicorn larvaes for his researchs.

Olive ridley

Olive Ridley going back to sea after the nesting. It is exhausted and carrying the sand it put on it while digging.

I work for four month on the turtle conservation program, now the nesting season is almost over. Two to three nights a week I patrol the nesting areas explaining to the public what they could do or couldn't do and trying to inform them as much as I could about the sea turtles that are nesting in French Guiana. We have three species, the Leatherback, the Green turtle and the Olive ridley wich are nesting on the Beaches of Cayenne. The main problem being the disturbance of the turtles with lights and the predation of the nests by dogs or human as well as pollution (plastic bags).
You can find more informations in French with the conservation association I work for http://www.kwata.net

A week-end on the Maroni river

Red-handed Tamarin monkey

Saguinus Midas
I walked 2:30 in the jungle near Cayenne when I encountered around 8 monkeys. High up in the trees, jumping from tree to tree. They are quite small, around 25 cm for 500 grams.