The Oyapock connection

The Oyapock river is the border between Brazil (Amapá state) and French Guiana. This rivers which penetrates deeply through the Amazon rain forest is also the unique natural route used daily by river taxis to connect indigenous populations together over a distance longer than hundreds miles. The snag is that the Oyapock river is not flat all along the trip...

Few miles after Saint Georges or Oiapoque cities, large rocks surface, creating rapids and water stream. This place, called Saut Maripa (litterally Maripa Jump), is extremely picturesque but not a real "path" that can be easily crossed by a pirogue.

Whatever your plans are, to make an excursion from the bank to observe this unique site, or to travel upstream to Camopi, you do need to disembark and leave your pirogue on the bottom side of  the falls.

Few meters higher, an unexpected show can be observed. Roughly hundred meters further upstream, a group of people are just waiting with their wrapped luggage standing on a rock in the middle of the river. 

Not very much later, a new pirogue arrives from the other side of the river, making some large curves to avoid dangerous rocks, in order to finally reach this isolated group of travellers....

Crew and freight are carefully transferred from the bank to the pirogue for the next leg of the trip.

Once everything is safely loaded, this heavy carriage slowly leaves upstream  this splendid location up to the next "jump".

How many time this sequence is repeated along the trip on the Oyapock river? How long does it take to reach Camopi?  Four hours or more? May be this is not the right question to ask because there is no other alternative. What is sure is that these river taxis are extremely skilled to maneuver in this unfriendly area and, on the top of that, quite well organised considering the number of necessary connections to get a smooth trip all along the Oyapock river.