• About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
  • Unsubscribe
No Result
View All Result
Live and Invest Overseas
FREE REPORT
BEST PLACES TO RETIRE
*No spam: We will NEVER give your email address to anyone else.
  • HOME
  • COUNTRIES
    • Top Destinations
      • Portugal
      • Panama
      • Belize
      • France
      • Colombia
      • Dominican Republic
      • Thailand
      • Mexico
      • Spain
      • Argentina
    • Browse All Countries
    • Best For
      • Retire Overseas Index
      • Health Care
      • Cost of Living
      • Investing in Real Estate
      • Editor’s Picks For Retirement
      • Establishing Residency
      • Starting an Online Business
      • Single Women
      • Playing Golf
  • BUDGETS
    • Super Cheap ($)
      • Cuenca, Ecuador
      • Chiang Mai, Thailand
      • The Philippines
      • Las Tablas, Panama
      • Granada, Nicaragua
    • Cheap ($$)
      • Algarve, Portugal
      • Medellin, Colombia
      • Boquete, Panama
      • Carcassone, France
      • Buenos Aires, Argentina
    • Affordable ($$$)
      • Abruzzo, Italy
      • Barcelona, Spain
      • Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
      • Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
      • Costa de Oro, Uruguay
    • Luxury On A Budget ($$$$)
      • Ambergris Caye, Belize
      • Paris, France
      • Panama City Beach Area
  • Real Estate
  • ARCHIVES
    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore Diversification
    • Our Latest On Coronavirus ⚠️
  • Making Money
    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing
  • CONFERENCES
  • BOOKSTORE
Live and Invest Overseas
  • HOME
  • COUNTRIES
    • Top Destinations
      • Portugal
      • Panama
      • Belize
      • France
      • Colombia
      • Dominican Republic
      • Thailand
      • Mexico
      • Spain
      • Argentina
    • Browse All Countries
    • Best For
      • Retire Overseas Index
      • Health Care
      • Cost of Living
      • Investing in Real Estate
      • Editor’s Picks For Retirement
      • Establishing Residency
      • Starting an Online Business
      • Single Women
      • Playing Golf
  • BUDGETS
    • Super Cheap ($)
      • Cuenca, Ecuador
      • Chiang Mai, Thailand
      • The Philippines
      • Las Tablas, Panama
      • Granada, Nicaragua
    • Cheap ($$)
      • Algarve, Portugal
      • Medellin, Colombia
      • Boquete, Panama
      • Carcassone, France
      • Buenos Aires, Argentina
    • Affordable ($$$)
      • Abruzzo, Italy
      • Barcelona, Spain
      • Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
      • Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
      • Costa de Oro, Uruguay
    • Luxury On A Budget ($$$$)
      • Ambergris Caye, Belize
      • Paris, France
      • Panama City Beach Area
  • Real Estate
  • ARCHIVES
    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore Diversification
    • Our Latest On Coronavirus ⚠️
  • Making Money
    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing
  • CONFERENCES
  • BOOKSTORE
No Result
View All Result
Live and Invest Overseas
No Result
View All Result
Home Travel

Devil’s Island

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Jan 10, 2010
in Travel
0
devils bay
212
SHARES
3k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Devil’s Island

“Are the French secretly so ashamed of Devil’s Island that they want the jungle to swallow it up?” wonders Correspondent Paul Lewis at the first stop of his New Year’s island-hopping adventures in the Caribbean.

“The name is now shorthand for one of the harshest penal colonies in history, which flourished here between 1852 and 1946 on three tiny islands off the coast of French Guiana, ironically known as the Salvation Islands.

“The faux-traitor Alfred Dreyfus was its most famous inmate, spending five years on Devil’s Island itself, the smallest and harshest of the three and reserved for political prisoners and the most violent criminals. But the prison’s notoriety was boosted by Henri Carrière’s best-selling account of his escape from the islands, ‘Papillon,’ which became a successful movie. ‘Dry Guillotine’ by René Belbenoit was an earlier best-seller about the appalling conditions on the islands.

“The colony was opened by Napoleon III after he declared himself Emperor, to house dissenters. But it was also an instrument for colonizing Guiana. Prisoners completing sentences of up to eight years had to spend an equivalent time in the colony, while those with longer sentences could never leave.

“Today, the prison buildings have been declared an historical monument that the French government is supposed to maintain. But it is doing nothing to preserve the place, and, if present trends continue, the hell-hole that was Devil’s Island is unlikely to survive another 20 years.

“Visitors arriving at the pretty little jetty on Royal Island (Isle Royale), the largest of the three, climb a jungle path amid monkeys, egrets, and colored birds to reach the prison colony’s former headquarters. This pile of coral blocks and rusty tin roofing is now cheap hotel called the Auberge des Isles with a largely backpacker clientele.

“But the rest of this monument to man’s inhumanity to man is fast disappearing into the voracious forest.

“In the infamous solitary confinement block, which daylight barely entered, the cell doors are falling off their hinges, and the building looks on the point of collapse. Several other cell blocks have collapsed completely, as has the prison hospital. The crumbling, rubbish-strewn chapel is closed to visitors, while the cemetery, for guards and their families carried off by fever, is a jumble of broken stones and cracked open graves. (Dead convicts were fed to the sharks.)

“The original Devil’s Island and Dreyfus’s prison hut are off-limits to visitors because the cable-guided ferry through the treacherous currents that surround the island is no longer working. And all three islands have to be evacuated every time France’s nearby Kourou Space Station fires a rocket into the heavens, lest it fall back onto them.

“Although France clearly has good reason to want to forget about Devil’s Island, locals at the Auberge des Isles say a restoration plan has been promised, but money is scarce and costs high. Some wonder whether the U.S. might help. ‘The Americans restored Versailles so maybe they will help here, too,’ says a Frenchwoman who works in the hotel.”

Kathleen Peddicord

P.S. With both temperatures and frozen white stuff falling across North America and Europe, the idea of a Caribbean island escape is tempting right now. We’ll continue reporting on Paul’s sun-filled island-hopping adventures throughout the week, therefore, with stops in Trinidad and Toboga, St. Lucia, and Sint Maarten/St. Martin…

 

***

MAILBAG:

“Kathleen, please pass this along to Tom S. who wrote on Friday to express his worry that your Panama conference might turn out to be little more than an infomercial.

“Tom, it is just as Kathleen says. No pressure sales. Just good information. You can act on the information as you choose. Then do more research on your own. I know. I have been there.”

— Elmore S., United States

***

“Is it possible have residency in several Central American (or maybe Caribbean) countries at the same time–for example, Panama, Belize, plus say one other?”

— Joel N., United States

Yes, you could have official residency status in more than one country at a time. Generally speaking, though, this isn’t necessary. It’s possible to move around from country to country to country without being a legal resident of all of them. Typically, you can spend up to six months a year in a country without establishing yourself as a full-time
resident.

I know someone who is living and working in the Dominican Republic but who has established residency in Uruguay. The eventual intention is to apply for passports in both countries, in the interest of keeping options open. I’d say, though, that, unless a passport is your end game, official residency in more than one country at a time doesn’t make sense…especially if any of the countries in question require you to pay taxes on your worldwide income as a foreign resident. Of course, that wouldn’t be an issue for Belize or Panama.

Tags: French Guiana
Share85Tweet53
Previous Post

2010 Predictions–India Up, China Down, And Much, Much More

Next Post

See Asia In 2010

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

Related Posts

Marsaxlokk bay harbour of Malta, with beautiful architecture and boats at dusk
Argentina

The 7 Best Places To Travel In Summer 2022

by Kathleen Peddicord
May 29, 2022
0

After a more than two-year hiatus on international travel, we're all looking forward to a summer of unforgettable trips. It's...

Read more
Male dentist treating female patient

The World’s 7 Best Countries For Dental Tourism

May 9, 2022
And old yellow school bus on a dirt road in Belize

Tales From The LIOS Archives—Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day

April 28, 2022
A view of Paris with the Seine River and the Eiffel tower in the background on a sunny afternoon

My Paris Bucket List: 7 Things To Do In The City Of Light

April 24, 2022
Rossio Square, Lisbon, Portugal

History And Culture In Lisbon, Portugal

April 19, 2022
A town in the Algarve, Portugal right next to a bright blue ocean

11 Reasons Why Living In The Algarve Region Has No Match

April 15, 2022
A white sand beach in the Caribbean

Find Out How This Method Is Helping Single Women Travelers

March 22, 2022
Next Post
the great wall of china

See Asia In 2010

Start Your New Life Today, Overseas

A world full of fun, adventure, and profit awaits! Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and we’ll send you a FREE report on the 10 Best Places To Retire In Style Overseas Today.







LIOS Resources


  • New To LIOS
  • Ask An Expert
  • Media Center
  • Contact Us
  • FAQs

Quick Links


  • Best Places To Live
  • Best Places To Retire
  • Finding A Job Overseas
  • Real Estate

Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and get your FREE report: The 10 Best Places To Retire Overseas In 2022

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
  • Unsubscribe

© 2008-2021 - Live and Invest Overseas - All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Countries
  • Budgets
  • Archives
  • News
  • Events
  • Bookstore
  • Newsletters
  • About Us
  • Members Area
  • Contact Us

© 2008-2021 - Live and Invest Overseas - All Rights Reserved.

Sign up for FREE and learn how to live the good life on a modest budget, find bargain property, and more. Plus, check out our free report on the 10 BEST PLACES TO RETIRE.

RETIRE OVERSEAS AND LIVE LIKE ROYALTY

The World’s Best Places To Be In 2022?

Discover Them Here…