Justins World

After telling people I was going to Reunion, I then had to explain where it is and I’m not sure, next to Mauritius really helps anyone. Sadly though my trip to Reunion has been top and tailed by 2 flight cancellations. I arrived a day later than expected and just an hour ago, my flight tomorrow was bought forward from 4pm to 7am. Thankfully there is a freeway around most of the way around the island, because i’m not staying anywhere near the airport tonight!

I mentioned freeways and its astounding that there is one that goeas around half the island, but alot of Reunion is high up on the volcanic formed slopes of the island. I’ve lost track of how many hairpin turns i’ve navigted in the past few days, but it would be in the hundreds easily. My first night was at a small village called St Anne. About 30 minutes from the airport the town has a lovely church and my guesthouse was right on the beach, if a beach with volcanic stones the size of a human head is still a beach.

My first full day in Reunion i had planned to go visit the edge of the active volcano in Reunion, but after driving through many hairpins, I discovered the road to the volcano was closed so went down the other side and found some amazing waterfalls instead. The Cascade de Grand Galet took some driving to get to but was well worth the drive up here with a lot of 1 lane bridges and hairpins also!

I checked into my guesthouse (Kaz Orea near the town of St. Leu) and the owners suggested a visit to the turtle hospital down the road. By down she meant, down the hill, the guesthouse is around 500m elevation. I checked that out, had a pizza from a nearby restaurant and watched the sunset. Little did I realise my next day would be less exciting.

I woke up planning to head up to a place with excellent views of one of the three cirques of Reunion. A cirque is an extinct volcano crater, two of them have towns built inside and the third one needs hiking in to visit, but there is a lookout…… if it was clouded in. Still the drive took me, up through villages, farmland at about 1000m elevation and a forest. The lookout was about 2100m elevation. I waited but it got worse and started to rain, as I drove back down to sea level, it was all sunshine, but dark clouds loomed over the mountainous interior of the island.

I had planned to go see a few more things tomorrow, but my flight to Mayotte (yes i here the Where’s Mayotte questions from here also) was moved from 16:00 to 7:00am. I’m about 1 hour from the airport and baggage cuts off at 6am, so its an early start for me tomorrow. Luckily its all on a freeway! I would definitely love to come back here one day. Its a tropical island but very french, its a bit bigger than Mauritius, also has taller mountains than Mauritius. Its a shame the direct flights to sydney got cancelled a few years ago. Most of the tourists here are French speaking, but i’ve had little difficulty with language.