#easytravelpost Saül is the gold-miner village in the heart of French Guiana, reachable only by plane from Cayenne (35–50 min, ~120 EUR round trip, card via Guyane Évasion, 2 flights/week). The Mount La Fumée mossy Inini trail is the 10 km (5 hr) loop from the village to the 420 m summit, where the primary forest gives way to a Sphagnum-lined ridge and the "smoking mountain" cloud cap sits most mornings. I flew Cayenne → Saül, slept at the Relais Amazonie (70 EUR/night, card), hired a local Hmong guide (40 EUR/day, cash euro) for the La Fumée trail—marked but easy to misread in leaf fall.
The mossy section: the 300–420 m ridge crest, where Sphagnum grows in the palm-boot prints, Frullania on the Eperua trunks, and Cecropia leaf axils hold Syrrhopodon. I went October (short dry)—ridge 27°C, summit cloud 21°C, moss wet at 7 a.m. Wore trail-runners; the trail is firm laterite, the ridge crest is root-and-moss, poles help.
Mistake: I walked without a guide—missed the turn at the "Grand Boeuf Mort" junction, backtracked 40 min. The trail is marked but leaf fall erases blazes in October. Second mistake: I didn't bring 20 EUR cash for the Saül airstrip bus (10 EUR each way, card zero). Third: I picked a Kapok seed pod for the photo—village kids laughed, it's the town tree, not forbidden but tacky. Don't.
Buy in Saül: a 6 EUR galette at the mission café, not the 25 EUR lodge plate. Gear: a 15 EUR rain shell from Cayenne—La Fumée means "smoke," the cloud rolls in hourly.
Local rule: French Guiana is EU soil, Schengen visa applies, yellow fever cert checked at Cayenne airport. No drone without a 150 EUR préfecture permit, no gold-panning in the village creek without a permit (it's still active), no cutting the Ronce vine. The moss on the ridge is the Inini forest's memory—step on the blazed line.
Opinion: Saül is France's deepest jungle and almost no European tourists go. Should the commune charge a 10 EUR trail honor box and run a weekly guided botany walk, or keep it free? I'd run the walk. Would you fly 120 EUR into EU jungle for a mossy ridge called "Smoking Mountain"?
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