The Îles du Salut — the “Islands of Salvation” — earned that hopeful name in the 1760s, when survivors of a catastrophic colonization scheme fled here to escape the fevers killing thousands on the mainland and found refuge on these breezy, near mosquito-free islands. A century later France made a grim joke of the name: from 1852 to 1953 the three specks off the coast of Kourou became its most notorious penal colony. Île Royale held the general population, Île Saint-Joseph the solitary-confinement cells, and the smallest — Île du Diable, Devil's Island — a handful of political prisoners, among them Captain Alfred Dreyfus, kept more than four years in isolation during the affair that split France. Escape was almost impossible: sharks and violent currents fill the channels, and the only link to Devil's Island was a cable car strung above the water.
The colony closed in 1953, and the jungle has swallowed most of it. Roofless cellblocks, a chapel, a hospital and warders' quarters stand vine-wrapped beneath a dense canopy of coconut palms, the ruins now as much a part of each island as the granite shore. Most visitors land on Île Royale, the largest island and the only one with facilities, and walk shaded trails past crumbling cells, an old lighthouse and a small cemetery, with a clear view across the strait to Devil's Island — still off-limits, guarded by the currents that once made it inescapable. A short crossing reaches Île Saint-Joseph and its roofless isolation block, open to the sky and half-eaten by roots. Strangest of all is what passes overhead: the islands lie under the flight path of the Guiana Space Centre and are cleared of people during every launch, so an Ariane rocket rising over an old prison yard is the modern counterpoint to a place built around isolation.