Trip to Reunion Island
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The Reunion Island is a marvelous place, full of magnificent mountains,
wonderful lagoons and delicious people.
We went there with my girlfriend for the past two weeks, hiking and
diving all around the island. It is a volcanic island whose volcano is
one of the most active on earth.
# Salazie caldeira
This is the first caldeira we went to, directly after landing, and we
visited the nice little village of Hell-bourg. The next day we went to
the « Trou de fer » by the Bélouve forest. The view point there is
impressive !
# Mafate caldeira
The next day, we went to Marla, a village in the Mafate caldeira. We
walked there because these caldeira is only accessible by foot, or
helicopter. The hike is beautiful, however we had fog during the
morning so we couldn't see much of the panorama. ! Marla is pretty
small, and most people living here are renting rooms to hikers. There
is a school however (with 10 kids !), and a snack, « chez Jimmy »
which sells ti punches to everyone passing by !
# East coast, or « windy coast »
There is not much to see here in my opinion, besides the vanilla
cooperative. There is way more to see in the south !
# South - The lava road
The main thing to see in the south is of course the lava road, which
crosses the old lava flows, that reach the ocean. Their size is
impressive and all those rocky lava floors make for a desolated view.
# South - Everything else
This region is beautiful. The weather is much nicer, and there are a
lot of "lava beach" and other funny stuff to see. There are also many
water falls cause by erosion.
# West coast, the lagoons
The lagoons are the only safe places for a bath in the ocean, because
of shark presence around the island. There is a natural coral barrier,
which makes the lagoon a safe place for snorkeling. You really get to
see fishes of various sizes, shapes and colours. It was incredible to
see that much fishes !
# Cilaos caldeira
I got to experience alpinism for the very first time, and it was
incredible ! We climhed the famous « 3 Salazes », right between the
Mafate and Cilaos caldeiras. The view was beautiful on both side, and
impressive too, as sometimes I was walking on traces barely 20cm wide !
Other than that, Cilaos is the third caldeira of the island, and it is
known for their lentils, so we definitely had to eat some !
# Last word
Reunion Island is a really nice place. I loved how you can switch from
the mountains to the lagoon in less than an hour. The food was also
pretty good (especially the « Rougail saucisse » !). I hope I'll get
to go back there someday !!
Oh and btw, here is a quick montage of a few pics I took there:
gopher://z3bra.org/I/u/reunion-2020.png
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~wgs
20201014.1934
