Border line

Saint Laurent du Maroni (French Guiana) is just opposite to Albina (Suriname), both cities being just separated by the Maroni river.
Here under is the nice view on Albina as seen from Saint Laurent du Maroni. Tourists may afford a day excursion in Albina showing an identity document at the border control. For implementing this plan you may just have to cross  the river.

In such a case, the first common sense idea is to go the to official harbour and board the local ferry commuting between the two cities. As you can see below, it is never extremely crowded. This place is only populated by the custom control policeman accommodated  in little hut on the right hand side. Once the control is done, the "Gabrielle", the name of this ferry, is just waiting for you, ready to go...

After a while, you will realise that the speed of the ferry being 0 km/h, the time needed to reach Albina will not be compatible with your initial plans and then you do have to implement the plan B. For this, move first to the (much more dynamic) local pirogue harbour,

where a crowd of hectic "taxi" drivers is waiting for you on the street. Negotiating a single or a return ticket is a piece of cake and few seconds later you are on your way. Forget the passport control.

This process looks so easy that the idea that those two countries have signed up for the Shengen Agreement may cross your mind during the four minute trip. Considering the number of pirogues in both directions you will also realise during the river crossing how intense is the traffic between French Guiana and Suriname...

When you return to Saint Laurent from Suriname by the same type of transportation, you may ask the pirogue driver to drop you at the "official harbour" for personal convenience: a nice opportunity to check if the situation has changed from what you experienced earlier in the day: indeed, the place looks as desert as in the morning. Only the custom control staff may have left (?)

Anyway, it is nice to feel safe and back to France!  After such an experience, you may want to have a drink or a snack. Saint-Laurent du Maroni is not a very large city but you may easily find a nice café or a small restaurant around. There is one in particular where you will notice something peculiar: a stack of caps...

showing evidence that in Saint Laurent du Maroni, custom controllers are getting depressed or have definitely decided to change job :-)

K.B.

P.S.: The situation with Brasil, on the other side of the country is not better despite a brand new bridge (Pont sur l'Oyapock, Oyapock river bridge) has been built between Saint-Georges de l'Oyapock (French Guiana)  and Oiapoque (Brasil). The infrastructure of the bridge is completed since August 2011 but still missing... the  border control personnel on both sides to be fully operational. The commissioning of the bridge in planned for January 2013 (...just the time needed to re-train, re-motivate and re-locate the personnel from Saint Laurent? ).