A happy love child

Although duty has bought me back to the rather harsh grey streets of London, a little part of my mind has stayed out in La Réunion where I did my elective last month. I wanted to share some memories, in the hopes of raising this little island's profile...ambitious perhaps but therapeutic if nothing else. You may remember my previous blog spent a disproportionate amount of time describing my first morning. Neither I, nor you as readers would appreciate a continuation of that aching detail, so instead I wanted to explain how the rather unexplored island slots together by reflecting on a week's travelling. ‘Unexplored’ is a loose term, many people [residents, honeymooners, French families] have carved their own paths through expensive hotels and car rentals for years. For me, a lone female traveller à pied [on foot] with a depressingly low budget, the path was somewhat overgrown. That said, it was more or less doable, and after five tumultuous weeks, I finally understood the ‘point’ of la Réunion. I will come to it.

Réunion is the happy love child of three different continents: Quarter European, quarter ‘Indian Ocean’ and half African. The word ‘Réunion’ in French literally translates as ‘meeting’, and it is so called due to this union of nations. Walking down the streets, the ease with which such a variety of people live side by side is refreshing. I am in no place to say whether everyone would agree with me (I occasionally detected some Metropolitan/Créole discontentment scratching under the surface) but as a people, ‘les Réunionnaises sont formidables’.

Sunset on La Réunion

I had known before arrival that the island is not huge; with a population of 700,000 and a road circumference of just 3 hours. As touched on in the previous blog, the island has a cool, alpine heart surrounded by warm, beach & lava laden peripheries. A geography rarely seen on larger land-masses and therefore an individual treat. Saint Dénis, my home in the North, is lined by a rocky, windy (slightly disappointing) coastline, rendering it largely untouched except for a few fishermen. Therefore, in search of beach, I headed westbound to 'le côte sous le vent' aka the wind-free coast. On leaving St. Dénis, I cursed my choice of seat, with a precariously supported sheer rock face preventing any view to the island's interior.  However, as we traversed the residential La Possession and small-but-atmospheric St. Paul the highlight of that first day came on this bus-ride. The ocean to the west stretched indefinitely blue, calm towards the flat horizon (the next land-mass, Madagascar, being hundreds of miles away). The sun was bedding down scarlet, peach and violet, in a freshly cleared sky; and lo – what’s that? Only a whale coming up for air, spurting a tower of water before diving down again for dinner. My excitement on the bus went largely unnoticed save for a few odd glances.

Sharks sharks sharks

I arrived an hour later in St Gilles les Bains; a commune with a busy high-street and one of the few towns on the island to embrace the tourist culture, a pleasant surprise after the somewhat industrial St. Dénis. With golden beaches and a shop-lined promenade, it is idyllic. On paper. Unfortunately, if you google La Réunion, the first thing to come up is almost always ‘Shark Attack kills 5/20/35/60 year old’. The majority of these happened on the West-coast, with St. Gilles being particularly hard-hit because of its fatally enticing beaches. Since early 2014, most swimmable beaches are either closed or closely surveyed, largely detracting from the fun of an afternoon dip. In addition, the waves, which render it perfect for surfing, make having even a little splash quite hard work. Saying that, I will duck out of the chronological to say that there are in fact a number of swimmable beaches, including the perfect Boucan Canot, boasting white sand and many restaurants, and l’Hermitage; a snorkelling heaven, shark-free due to a natural lagoon created by the coral reef. I passed a very enjoyable day here watching the kite-surfers do their thing from my €3,50 catered sun lounger…

Tempting beaches

Back in St. Gilles, I was lucky to find a rare fellow traveller, somewhat lost without the handy tool of French. Swiss-German Gregor was on holiday after visiting a friend at the university in the south, and on discovering we had English in common, it didn’t take long for us to stick together. After spending a couple of days mooching around the quiet St. Gilles (a town quietened by sharks and winter), we made a plan to go central and see what the heart of the island had to offer.

Travel buddies

Cirque de Cilaos is the lowest of the three ‘cirques’ or mountain ranges on La Réunion. Resting at a cool 2500m in the central mountainous terrain, Cilaos was my first taste of the ‘other side’ of La Réunion, and what I soon discovered to be its raison d’être. The journey up was impressive, not only because of the lush green, sharp mountains, but also because of the bus driver’s skills. With large stretches of the endless windy road offering only one lane for both directions, horn skills and speed control were a must. Saying that, I could easily spend a whole day on the buspeering down into the deep valleys and up at the towering peaks.

The scary gîte

We arrived in Cilaos rather unprepared; dusk looming, air cooling, maps failing. I approached a man to ask if he knew where our gîte [hostel] might be. It was only upon striking up conversation that I saw his rather red eyes and further still into conversation when I spotted the hand-held machete. We [I] found this rather funny and when he offered up his gîte instead of the one we had in mind, the response was of course ‘Yes’. Why not stay in a cleaver-bearing stranger’s house in an isolated village in the mountains? As Gregor took pleasure in pointing out, the perfect setting for a scary film. 

The gîte itself turned out to be legitimate, with cooking facilities and a dorm of 10. Us being the only residents only added to the freaky atmosphere, that and the swiftly descending fog. Despite having a reputation across La Réunion for being a popular hiking destination, the village was practically deserted. A little tour around took 30 minutes, where we saw 4/5 empty restaurants and got some hungry glances from bored waiters. We decided to try out one of the ‘bars’ beforehand and ended up at a little hut Chez Miguel. N.B. Bars in France are not the same as in England; they are more often a haven for wine-dependent locals than hip youngsters. This was indeed one of those, and in our naivety we took a seat inside rather than outside. 45 minutes later we scrambled out after some uncomfortable conversation with Cilaos’ somewhat…different…creole speaking, alcohol drinking, gangja smoking male population. We couldn’t leave fast enough.

As the clouds lifted...

Despite some speculation, we woke the next day, still alive. This was good on many levels, if not mostly because the clouds had lifted, leaving us with 360 degree views of the magnificent cirque de Cilaos. A definite 10 out of 10. Unfortunately, due to a frustratingly timed meeting back in St. Dénis, we left Cilaos before really having the opportunity to explore but as we queued for the bus, a kind old man in a worn hat offered me a bag full of freshly picked clementines from his daughter's tree. I liked Cilaos.

The boys watching kite-surfing

I had decided to spend the first weekend on the other side of the island in Réunion’s second biggest city, St. Pierre. Arriving once again mapless at dusk [I should probably have learnt my lesson], St. Pierre seemed a little disappointing at first glance. Despite having heard that there were white beaches and some good bars, I spent the evening watching Bake Off in my over-priced hotel. I discovered that the beach had been hiding but 400m from my hotel, sandy with a natural lagoon rendering it swimmable. However, a course wind meant most bathers sat away from the coast on the grass behind. I tracked down Gregor, who was now with friends at the university of Le Tampon [yes yes] and company in hand, we spent the day in one of the beach bars drinking 'dodo' (a local, dodo themed beer - got to give it to 'em, they know how to market an extinction) watching kite-surfers until the sun set.

The lovely Swiss-Germans (Gregor & friend Marco) offered me a bed for the night up in the neighbouring city of Le Tampon. This posed some difficulties as the buses had stopped frustratingly early, a recurring theme, and so we were left with one option: hitch-hiking. Luckily, hitch-hiking or ‘Stop’, has a strong reputation in La Réunion and it rarely takes more than 10 minutes for someone to pick you up. I was rather cynical on this point, who was going to pick up 3 strangers at 9pm on a Friday night? Well two youngsters happily listening to lil’ Wayne in a car-park were our people, and they kindly drove 30 minutes out of their way to take us to Marco’s doorstep. Subsequent ‘stops’ have proved just as successful.

Lagoon jumping

My week of holiday was almost up, but not wasted. After a Marco-style breakfast with impressive views in Le Tampon, we headed out in search of a natural lagoon, 40 minutes outside of St. Pierre. Due to of the time of year, the lagoon [called ‘dix huit bassins’, I think] was deserted leaving us at liberty to jump from the rocks 10m – 30m above the azure lagoon crashing to and fro with Go-pros. The water was thankfully shark-free due to a natural rocky barrier, leaving it cool and calm to swim in. I must admit that this was a fine way to spend my last day before the tsunami of work that was approaching.

My next few weeks were spent largely in St. Dénis, walking between hospital and apartment. My experiences there were been pretty incredible too, but in a different way, and certainly not to be covered here as I am sure that anyone still reading is needing a good lie-down now. Before you do, however, I'd like to mention an incredible journey to Piton de la Fournaise, one of the world's most active volcanoes.

Above the clouds at sunset

A few weeks in, I had found a group of ERASMUS students studying at the university in St. Dénis with whom I had the pleasure of visiting the Volcano. I had a 'coup de coeur' with Réunion on the drive. We spent a calm morning tanning on Boucan Canot beach, followed by a drive where we ascended to the tropical flower laden Le Tampon with views of the coast stretching in both directions. We emerged just above the cloud-line at sunset, to see the green cow-laden fields of Plaines des Cafres enclosed in a ring of aggressive mountains, before finally passing over to the darkened, rusty mars-like terrain of the volcanic plains at dusk. Such a small island with four monumentally different landscapes all in just 2 hours. This is what La Réunion is about, this is why people should come.

Silhouettes at sunrise

The ascent to the volcano was due to take 6 hours round-trip. Determined to see the sun rise above the clouds from the volcano summit, we had an eye-aching 2:30am start. Having put our bikinis from the day before to the bottom of our bags, we laid on the fleeces, hiking boots and hats and set off in the pitch black to tackle the climb. Previous hikers had described the trek as 'not technically difficult, but the terrain...oh the terrain' and, not being a seasoned hiker, I didn't really gauge what this meant. I soon realised that the key to climbing across hardened lava in the dark is a torch. A torch which had evaded the packing process. Left scrambling closely behind those with torches at a fairly quick pace to beat the sun was bound to have its problems. When I tripped and fell, shin first onto one of the more jaggedy lava formations, noone was really surprised, and the only solution was to 'keep calm and carry on'. Nothing was broken (except skin). Stiff upper lip...

As the sun started to wake, a mystical light [ironically] shadowed the commonplace sunset. With a thick blanket of cloud covering the sky below, blue turned to purple, turned to red and finally orange, creating a backdrop that Apple would pay big-bucks to get their hands on. Despite some speculation, we made it to the top with a few minutes to spare, where the sun spilled its bright face across the huge steaming volcanic crater. Ankles aching, we popped open a bottle of prosecco and enjoyed the view.

And so my not-so-whistle-stop tour of Réunion ends here. An island oft shadowed by the paradisical beaches of its Mauritian neighbour, Réunion is not one to miss, it is one to watch.

A Bientôt!