Réunion Island

Above the clouds exploring this beautiful island.

You’ve heard of Madagascar, right? Maybe heard of Mauritius? Well we didn’t go to either of those BUT there is a super small island in between the two. Open your map app and zoom in really closely and you’ll find Réunion Island, a province of France but located in Africa. I’ll be completely honest and tell you I had never even heard of it until about 5 days before we arrived there. How did we choose Réunion? Danny watched a show about cars called The Grand Tour and an episode happened to filmed on the island. And that is literally how we came about spending an entire week there. They had direct flights from Johannesburg so we flew from Cape Town to Joburg, Joburg to Saint Denis. We were both super unfamiliar on where to stay so after some research, I found that the west side of the island was the better area. Since we booked the trip kind of last minute, lodging options were scarce so we stayed in a hotel on the beach in Boucét Canot. After booking our flights, we discovered that this island houses the most sharks in the entire world and swimming is prohibited (literally illegal) unless you are in special roped off areas. So…I guess we weren’t scuba diving! Below are pictures from our balcony at the hotel we were staying at: Le Saint Alexis. The outside of the hotel was beautiful!! The rooms inside were a little dated but the outside made up for it.

Since we arrived late the night before, we spent our first day getting the lay of the land. We were quickly humbled in realizing that really no one speaks English. It’s quite a vacation destination for the French so everyone on the island speaks French. It’s not that we expect people to speak English while we are the ones in their country, but I guess we got spoiled in Botswana, Zambia, and South Africa where English isn’t the first langue, but a language people use most as there are travelers from around the world and the English language is somewhat of a common thread. But every sign, paper, menu, etc. was in French. Google translate can only do so much while trying to navigate an entire restaurant menu. I tried to dig deep into my brain and go back to the sixth grade when we I took a French elective class. Turns out hello, my name is Camille, goodbye, thank you, and counting to five didn’t get me too far. Danny somehow thought speaking Spanish was a good idea so would resort to that. Between the two of us we were pretty comical.

Fear not, that didn’t stop us from having a great time! We spent the next day on a drive to Cilaos, a town in the middle of the mountains. The mountains are very difficult to see from the beach because of the clouds, but the tallest mountain on the island reaches over 10,000 feet! Which made the road to Cilous one of the coolest, scariest drives I’ve ever been on. Windy switchbacks sometimes coming down to one lane of traffic at a time sum up the drive and I was shocked our little rental car made it up there. Danny did a great job driving! There are two volcanos on the island and the drive led us up to one of those. We couldn’t see the top because it was quite cloudy that day but the surrounding terrain was beautiful. We stopped for lunch in Cilaos and had “dodo’s” which are their local beer. I think we had sandwiches to eat because that’s the only thing we recognized on the menu. We continued the scenic drive and then turned around to watch the sunset back at the hotel and enjoy their local cocktail: ti punch. Ti punch is basically rum on ice with a lime wedge. I will say I did not enjoy it but Danny did!

The next morning we woke up early and chose to hike up Piton de la Furnaise, the second volcano on the southern part of the island. We arrived at the trailhead around 8am. We were soon thrown into one of the most difficult hikes I’ve ever done. It starts with a rapid decent, then about a mile of just flat volcano rock, then about 4 miles of uphill volcano rock. We’ve never hiked a volcano before so we weren't sure what to expect but volcano rock is NOT fun to hike on. It’s pointy and can easily crumble so the hike up and down was extremely tedious. It was also the most crowded hike I’ve ever done as well. I thought for a Monday and an early start, it wouldn’t be crowded at all. But I guess everyone else had the same idea. Anyways, we finally made it up. I was expecting to see lava for some reason but all we saw was a pit of dirt. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful day and we were glad to be outside in warm weather. We were beat that night after a long day of hiking so we spent the next couple of days relaxing at our hotel at the beach. Danny golfed on one of those days. I read two books. Service was super spotty on the island and we only ended up getting wifi on one corner of our very small patio at the hotel which was kind of a bummer but not the worst thing. Below are some pictures of the hike!

On our last day, we decided to do another hike, this time by the river in hopes we would stumble upon some waterfalls. It was a walk in the park compared to the volcano hike we did. We were greeting by the trail dog and she lead us the whole way through some amazing scenery. She ditched us on the way down for another family to lead. We saw an amazing waterfall that seemed to come out of the rock wall. A short distance down the river, there was another waterfall and we decided to sim beneath it. Well, Danny decided to and did a very brave dive. I was more skeptical because the water was quite frigid but I did get my hair wet.

The food there was actually really good! I have never been one to seek out French food, but on the island the local food is more Creole French which I loved! We mainly went to little outdoor hole in the wall spots and since we couldn’t really read the menu, we kind of blindly ordered but it would work out! Amazing meats in kind of a red sauce served with rice and some type of  lentil curry are the local dish and we would have that for dinner most nights. For lunch, we ordered these sandwiches that were an open-faced baguette with ham, cheese, fries, and whatever else you wanted all broiled. It’s kind of hard to describe the food but it was really tasty! I tried to include a picture of them both!

Overall, Réunion Island was well worth it. Danny and I decided if we were ever near here again we would love to come back. There was a lot of the little island we didn’t get to experience. For instance, apparently there is a town that is only accessible by foot or helicopter. Most people hike there and stay the night and hike out the next day. I would love to do this! It is truly a hidden gem in Africa. A random decision turned pleasant surprise.

We decided to change our flight back and instead of going back to Johannesburg for three nights before we flew to Morocco, we decided to hop on the longest domestic flight and go to Paris for the weekend! So here I am, on the 11 hour flight to Paris. This’ll be my first time Europe and while I am looking forward to the weekend, I am even more excited to be in Morocco in a few short days and see Danny’s mom, Mary!