State of Tourism in Guyana, Suriname and French Guyana
The three Guyanas (Guyana, Suriname and French Guyana) are all not very touristic or not at all touristic. Therefore public transport is more or less available. I nevertheless recommend for all of them to have your own vehicle. To understand the situation I compare the three of them shortly.
Guyana
Guyana has a good working minibus system for local people, which can be used by tourists as well. As long you know where to catch the bus. Therefore it’s best to ask the people. Minibuses are not costly, only the route from Georgetown to Lethem is pricy.
English Creole is spoken throughout the country so the conversation in English is possible. But sometimes you get the situation where you don’t understand a word, due to their accent or too many Creole words.
Hotels exist but only the high class ones are visible on the internet. Hotels within a budget are only visible in the physical world, so you need to ask and go from place to place to find a good accommodation. The range goes from 25 CHF (22€) up.
Suriname
Suriname has a system of shared taxis or governmental buses. Tickets for buses have to be bought about one day in advance as there are not many and lot of people asking for them. They are cheap. Shared taxis are not expensive neither, about 16 CHF (14€) from Paramaribo to the border.
Dutch Creole is spoken and sometimes even Dutch people have problems. But a lot of people in the tourism sector speak English. If you are used to germanic languages you should not have too much problems at least reading it.
Hotels and budget hotels exist and in Paramaribo there is even a kind of hostel (at least when it comes to the price 10 CHF/8.80€), Shamirs Roomrental is a flat where you can rent a room. All in all a very cozy place.
French Guyana
French Guyana is part of France, but there is not really public transport. It is limited to connect Kourou and Cayenne with the two border cities St.Laurent du Maroni and St.George de Oyapoque.
To really visit the country it is best to rent a car. Budget Guyane has small cars for 25€ (28 CHF) a day.
A reason why this is so, is that the French government sees Guyana as the place where the space ships start Therefore only for those things they have infrastructure.
French is the official language of France and in this case Guyane is not different from France, at all. Only a few people speak English.
Hotels exist but they start from 45 Euros on. There are nevertheless carbets to get for 10-15€ (11-17 CHF). Most of them are well outside the towns, so you anyways need your own car to get there.
For people with a bit more spirit of freedom and less money for accommodation or with their own mobile home, the app park4night works pretty well. There are not a lot of sights to stay, but some of them are really beautiful.
If your French is good enough, I highly recommend to buy a French guidebook about French Guyana, they are much more detailed, than any other. If you don’t have time to buy one in advance, there are some sold at the Carrefour in Cayenne. I’m pretty sure this also counts for Suriname and Dutch guidebooks.

