Well, sort of Devil’s Island. Really what we’re visiting is Isle Royale, which had far more in the way of prisoners held, while Devil’s Island proper really wasn’t used as much. Tendered ashore, and getting on the tenders from the ship was a little iffy. Apparently this stop is missed fairly regularly. (We’ve talked to people on the cruise that say that this is their 4th stop here and the first one that actually made it.) Headed off up the long slope to the prison area by heading left from the dock. And it was definitely a long slope, and it was pretty brutally hot. Passed several monkeys on the way up. Wandered around some of the ruins up top, but it was kind hard to get a real good feel for things, there’s very little in the way of any sort of maps for the area, and not much in the way of signage. Oh, and for the little there is, it’s not surprisingly in French.
There’s a hotel on the island, although for the life of me, I’m not entirely sure why someone would actually want to stay here. Just doesn’t seem like much to do. Rates seemed to vary from as little as 10 euros for a hammock, to something like 235 euros for an air conditioned room. That higher rate may have included meals, it was hard to figure out reading their listing, once again, in French. Cathy bought some exceedingly overpriced postcards in the hotel shop.
From the hotel, we then headed down the back side of the island. From what little we knew, we thought it was supposed to connect back around to the place we’d catch the tender. Heading down this way did really give us our best look at Devil’s Island proper, over a small channel of water. Saw several egrets and sea turtles along this section. Eventually worked our way around back to the tender area to head back to the ship.