Reunion Island - a little peice of France

Reunion Island is indeed a little peice of France in the middle of the Indian ocean. Another volcanic island, same as Mauritius but this one has an active volcano which last erupted in Aug 15. Much more exciting to be living on a small island with an active volcano and for added excitment has the occasional severe battering from passing cyclones. It is only 30 miles wide but the highest point of the island is 10,069 ft so it does literally rise straight out of the Indian Ocean. It is 500  miles east of Madagascar and is classified as an overseas department of France.

France first claimed it back in 1649 and apart from losing it to the British for a brief 5 years between 1810 to 1815, has held it ever since. Coffee and slaves were introduced in the early 1700s but the coffee was wiped out by cyclones in the early 1800s. The Brits introduced sugar cane when they had their short stint and it now accounts for 85% of all exports by value.

As I said, it is very French, the islanders are French citizens,  official language is French, although Creole is mostly spoken and everything is written in French. Very little English, if at all, appears anywhere. They do have tourists but they are mostly from France, it is not promoted by many other countries.  So if you want a French holiday with a difference, go to Reunion Island.

Once again we pulled into port (or Le Port to be more exact)  in the early hours of the morning and we were one of the first to be on the shuttle bus that was to take us the 15 miles to the resort town of St Gilles les Bains. The capital of the island is St Denis and 9 miles in the opposite direction.  Why they didn't run the shuttle bus the shorter distance to the capital remains a mystery to us but as this is another maiden port for the boat maybe they thought this was the better of the two and if it was the case, then in my opinion they were right. We joked later about it saying it was such a lovely spot that next time they would make it a paid tour.

We decided that today we wouldn't race around the island seeing yet more mountains, waterfalls or volcanos as there is just so many you can see, a bit like  churches, or go into the city and fight with traffic and people. Today was going to be kick back and relax day and just enjoy the place we were in. You may wonder just what we were relaxing from as it isn't exactly stressful lying around on a cruise boat all day but I can assure you that even that can be exacting as previously mentioned in other posts.

So we took the 45 min drive to St Gilles and admired the scenery and particularly the roads on the way. We made our way around the edge of the island with the road clinging onto the side of the hills,  at one point it left the land altogether and rose up on massive concrete pillars forming a bridge alongside the hills then when it couldn't go around any more they had tunneled right through the mountain itself. Not unusal you may think but it is very sophisticated engineering for just a tiny two-bit island with less than 700,000 living on it. There were a few grumblings from the Europeans amongst us wondering where the money came from to finance this advanced roading.

Once we were dropped off at the resort town we spent the rest of the day wandering around the shops, of which there were a lot and so delightfully French and around the waterfront that had lots of cafés and restaurants and was also the starting point for the big game fishing boats and scuba diving boats. There were some lovely white coral sand beaches but don't be fooled by the enticing looking  sea just beckoning you in to its tepid blue waters. If you didn't know before coming here and you walked straight past the big no swimming notice boards warning of the dangers of these waters you could very easily end up as shark bait or appetizer to the great whites circling this island. Despite the beautiful beaches and hot weather this is definitely not the place to go splashing in the ocean.

I didn't mind so much, we found a nice little restaurant right on the beach, overlooking the sea and perched up on the high bar to watch the world go by while sipping on cold beers and nibbling on a fruits de mer pizza. It was really the only thing I could read on the menu and the staff didn't speak a word of English but we got by and spent a very pleasant afternoon there until it came time to leave. We panicked a bit as we had forgotten that here, like in  Europe, they have siesta and the bottle shops were closed. Thank goodness we managed to find one open and once again loaded Jon's backpack up with some excellent good quality French wine before retreating back to the bus for the return trip. It was the last bus back and we only just caught it, lucky it stopped for us in the middle of the road as we waved it down.  All was uneventful until we got back to the pier. The bus driver must have come through these gates a hundred times  before, it was a tight fit and you would need to swing the bus right out to squeeze through but he took a short cut and the next thing there was a loud explosion, like a gun going off, and glass and bits of metal went flying into the bus covering the seats and aisle. The bus stopped immediately and poking through the top window opposite us was the metal part of the fence with the barb wire wrapped around it. He couldn't move forward and it was difficult to move back but with some directions from Jon he managed to unhook himself and made a successful attempt to get through the gate. The bus was a mess but luckily no one  was hurt.  There is always something exciting happening to keep us on our toes.