Mauritius to Réunion

28 April - 8 May 2008

Quels cirques!

5 May. Cilaos. At breakfast in the chilly morning air, our host presented us with Wednesday’s Journal de l’Ile and the full page article about us.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We walked down to the Cascade de Bras Rouge with great views of the Cirque de Cilaos. A good light lunch at Les Physalis and local specialities at dinner in Le Vieux Cep. In case you’re still wondering, eating well is an important ingredient of our trip!

6 May. Cilaos. We drove to the little hamlet of Îlet à Cordes, where we thought we saw the view of sea and mountains that had been painted in 1830 by the Danish sailor Frederik von Scholten. Alas, later we found out that the painting was actually done in Mauritius, called Île de France in those days.
After tasting some locally produced wine at ‘Chai de Cilaos’, we drove to Pierrefonds Airport in St. Pierre to refuel the airplane (EUR 2.60 per litre!), pay the airport fees and file the flight plan for our early morning departure to the Seychelles on Thursday. Stephane Courtois (responsible for operations at Pierrefonds) kindly provided us with an insecticide spray to kill all the insects in the plane just before take-off. Angela’s glasses had finally arrived by DHL from South Africa the day before but she still had to drive into St. Pierre to pick up the parcel from DHL’s office and pay a further 62 euros in taxes. She also went to the post office to send off a 20 kg parcel of excess luggage, books and souvenirs to lighten the plane a bit for the long hop to Oman. Duties completed, we drove to Hotel Dimitile in the charming village of Entre Deux, just 20 minutes from the airport.

7 May. Entre Deux. We went for a walk in Le Bras de la Plaine canyon nearby, and had a delicious Creole lunch in Le Chocas in the village. We called the aéroclub in Pierrefonds, and the Middle East charts from Jeppesen had still not arrived.

8 May. Usually the cirques of Réunion are clear of clouds until 9 - 10 a.m. As we were leaving early anyhow, the plan was to fly VFR through the three cirques (Cilaos, Mafate and Salazie), and then join IFR at St. Denis Gilot on the north side of the island for the long flight over the Indian Ocean to Seychelles. The Cirque de Cilaos was in the clear at sunrise when we left our hotel in Entre Deux, but by the time we reached Cilaos around 8 a.m. local time, the eastern sides of both the Cirque de Cilaos and the Cirque de Mafate were clouding over, and the Cirque de Salazie was totally in the clouds. Nevertheless, there was a lot of early morning VFR tourist traffic broadcasting on the common air to air frequency 123.5 MHz.