Ringed by four hills northwest of the capital Cayenne, Kourou has long been considered as having the perfect landscape for launching space missions. Its equatorial forests safeguard take-offs of various nations’ interplanetary missionaries, enabling these spacecrafts to land right into their programmed trajectories. France has taken advantage of Kourou's vantage point and built the future port of space tourism called the Centre Spatial Guyanis, or simply, the Guiana Space Center.
When the European Space Agency was born in 1975, the French offered to share the Space Guiana Center to its European counterparts after considering that its unique landscape serves as a buffer to cyclones and typhoons. Space missions have become a staple in this place. Since then, satellites from the USA, Japan, Canada, India and Brazil have chosen the center as the ideal launching site.
In spite of an influx of money for the development of its space center, Kourou remains a poor city with a high employment rate. Nor the city's design with its 70'-80's style or the chance to be mugged at night makes Kourou an attractive tourist destination. The only place worth visiting beside the Space Center is the Le Vieux Bourg, a strip of restaurants and bars.
Apart from space ships, Kourou is also the port of departure for those heading to the former penal village of Îles du Salut, where weekenders retreat for a forest camp or a river canoe. Most prison buildings in both Kourou and Îles du Salut were demolished to make room for exclusive and budget hotel accommodations. These hotels serve a variety of entertainment activities as well as an array of spiced foods to satiate the palate.
Given that the space experience is limited to tours of the Guiana Space Center and its adjacent laboratories, travelers may choose to go kayaking at Lake Bois Chaudat or hike at the rock walls of Les Roches Gravées.
