Mauritius to Réunion

28 April - 8 May 2008

Quels cirques!

Departure formalities at this big airport went smoothly as the operations office was very helpful. The IFR arrival route to St. Pierre took us right over the volcano Piton de la Fournaise at 12000 feet and we were lucky with the weather as it was almost free of clouds.
Upon arrival, we were greeted by Eddy Delaey (ex-president of the Aéroclub du Sud) and a journalist, Armelle Hervieu, from Journal de l’Île who spent an hour interviewing us about our travels by Honey Mooney. The article was published two days later.
After the interview and a quick bite to eat, there were only a few hours of daylight left for the 50 hour inspection at the Aéroclub du Sud and it was dark by the time we headed northeast in our hired car. We were to spend the next 10 days touring Réunion and doing some hiking. We drove to a Chambre d’Hôte Piton de l’Eau at Grande Ferme near Bourg Murat at 1600 m altitude and had dinner with our hosts Louis and Brigitte. We got our first taste of the local speciality gratin de chou chou. The chou chou is a rather watery, light green vegetable, called choko in English, which Angela remembers eating in Brazil.

29 April. Bourg Murat. It was a nice clear morning for our drive up to Pas de Bellecombe for a walk to the base of the cone of Piton de la Fournaise volcano where we had to suffer the company of hundreds of other tourists. Due to recent volcanic eruptions, it’s forbidden to climb right up to the cone these days, so it was just as well that we’d got a good view of the volcano from the air yesterday.
In the afternoon we drove up to the village of Hell-Bourg in the Cirque de Salazie past sheer cliff faces weeping with waterfalls. It was raining as we got installed at Les Jardins d’Héva above the village. The view from the dining room to the surrounding mountains is quite breathtaking.

30 April. Hell-Bourg. The day dawned bright and sunny, which is lucky for this, the wettest side of Réunion. We did a steep and spectacular hike up to Gîte Bélouve, passing a chou chou plantation on the way. After a brief snack and a call via the satellite phone to Mr. Frost of Seychelles civil aviation about our clearance, we continued through the Bélouve tamarind forest to the waterfalls at the Trou de Fer. The path was muddy and slippery the last half an hour or so to the falls and we had to take it very slowly. After 7 hours of hiking and 860 m of ascent we were tired when we got back to Hell-Bourg and were ready for a sauna and Jacuzzi at Les Jardins d’Héva, followed by a delicious Creole dinner at Relais des Cimes.

1 May. Hell-Bourg. We went for a stroll round the pretty village of Hell-Bourg and walked to the ruins of the thermal baths which were blocked by a landslide in 1948.
After lunch we set off down the mountainside again towards the northeast coast. We visited the Coopérative de Vanille in Bras-Panon, which provided an excellent guided tour of their facilities for vanilla treatment and the history of growing vanilla in Réunion. It was a young slave in the 19th century who discovered how to get the plants to produce pods. Each flower has to be manually pollinated. The discovery didn’t help the poor slave, though. It was his master who stole the credit for it and the slave eventually died in poverty.
Late afternoon we drove to Dos d’Âne at the edge of the Cirque de Mafate, where we had dinner and stayed in a Chambre d’Hôte Auberge du Cap Noir.