Maripasoula

Maripasoula is the largest commune in France by area, eighteen thousand square kilometres of rainforest on the upper Maroni with about twelve thousand people in it and no road to anywhere. Everything arrives by air from Cayenne or by pirogue up the river from Saint-Laurent, which takes two days against the rapids. Aluku Maroon and Wayana villages line both banks, and Suriname is the far side of the water. Gold has been worked here legally and illegally for a century. The town is the way in to the southern half of the Guiana Amazonian Park. It covers more ground than any département in mainland France.