January 20, 2007
Day 479
We started hitching early this morning, but had some trouble getting anyone to stop for us. Finally, in the middle of the rain, a strange man with about $10,000 of camera equipment for his "hobby" took us into Kourou.
I tried calling Alina, our couchsurfing host in Kourou, but she wasn't home. Luckily, while I was searching in vain for a map of the city, she spotted Craig while driving around and picked us up. Alina, who grew up in Romania and Germany and previously lived in France, works on the rocket. It's the EU's state-of-the-art facility for launching satellites into geosynchronous orbit so it was great getting to know someone who works there. We spent the day hanging out with Alina, her boyfriend Greg, and some of their other friends in town. It was a nice change of pace to act like one of the locals for awhile.
