Day 8. (January 9) Devil's Island photos (continued)

... as Ric learns to use Google Blogger.

Here's where Devil's Island is, part of French Guiana:

Above is a map of the main island, Isle Royale, where prisoners first were taken. This is the only one of the three islands we visited. Papillon managed to "visit" all three, this one harsh but not too hash. Then he graduated to the next, with horrible solitary confinement. (To me, based on the movie, it seemed by far the worst.) But then he was sent to the third, which was reserved for political prisoners and the worst prisoners, but it seemed pretty good to me—clearly I'm missing something. It was this third island from which he escaped, jumping off cliff into the ocean an climbing onto a net bag of coconuts (?) that he and a fellow prisoner had crafted, an letting the tides take him to the mainland. His friend opted out at the last minute. The movie jumps from him laughing in the water to him two or three decades later flying from Venezuela back to Paris.

Our tenders discharged us at the squiggle you see at the right below the "10." I circumnavigated the island clockwise while most of our fellow Road Scholars, wisely, just retraced their steps back to the tenders from the buildings on the left. Although only a couple of miles, I got very tired and a little light-headed, presumably having let myself get a little dehydrated. So I took a break, drank some water, and took a half hour nap on a convenient palm frond.

Here are just from more photos from my trek around the main island.

Our friend, Doris Goldthwaite, and     

I back at the tender dock enjoying

some refreshing water.                          And here is our view of the islands as we tender back to ship.