Reunion Island, or Welcome to France

Part of cruising is dealing with local Immigration  rules and regulations. Most of the time the ship Clearance Officer looks after this, and that is why they keep our passports when we check in. Sometimes that is not the case and both Mauritius and Reunion fall into the latter category, leading to the two oddest Immigration experiences we have had in a very long time.

In Mauritius, everyone had to have a face-to-face meeting with Immigration, meaning we all dutifully went to the front desk to collect our passports the day before. We were then called up by groups, where we walked in one door of Palm Court, across the dance floor past the Immigration officers, who were not even looking, and out the far door where we handed our passports back to the Clearance Officer.

In Reunion, we were advised that we would be subject to "random" Immigration checks as we disembarked and it was mandatory for everyone to carry their passport while ashore. So back we go to the front desk to collect our passports. Now, we have been selected at random so many times that we joke we should change our last name to Random, but not this time, and we have yet to find anyone who was stopped, let alone asked for their passport. The joys of travel!!

Like Mauritius, Reunion has a very jumbled colonial past, but at the end of the day, it ended up a French colony and eventually was made a Prefecture of France, meaning that we were officially in France, which probably explains the Immigration rules! Once off the ship and on our tour bus, the French influence pretty obvious with all of the signs in French with no English subtitles as you often see elsewhere.

Also like Mauritius, the origins of Reunion are volcanic, but in this case the volcano is still active and is THE most active volcano in the world. In fact, it was erupting that day, but on the other side of the island, and our tour Piton de la Fournaise - The Peak of the Furnace, was a visit to see this volcano. Our guide assured us the eruption would not affect our tour, but we had to hurry to get there as there were clouds in the forecast. Now, that sounds fine in theory, and the island has a very high quality highway that rings completely around it, but once you leave that highway and head into the highlands you  are travelling steadily uphill along VERY windy roads, with a whole lot of hairpin turns, and you are doing it on a 40 passenger tour bus!! Even "hurrying" the drive took almost three hours with only two short stops along the way.

The views from our first rest stop. This part of the island
is ringed by a coral reef

The countryside near the coast

The first stop was the obligatory "bathroom break", but the second was at an overlook of a valley. Because of its volcanic origin, and the fact the volcano is active, the land "moves" and we passed several enormous valleys along the highway. What makes this one unique, and when you see the picture you will see it is HUGE, is that it was caused almost 30 years ago by one ENORMOUS landslide!!! Our guide told us that the noise of the slide was so loud that residents miles away thought the volcano had exploded!!!

Continuing on upward over evermore winding roads, and periodically driving through clouds, we came to an overlook over a lava field from eruptions many years prior that we would have to drive across to get to the volcano viewing area. The road looked pretty much dead straight, but the serpentine switchback below that we would also have to drive, in said 40 passenger bus, looked rather daunting. Our guide assured us that our driver had been required to have five years of experience driving the twisting roads of the island before being certified to drive this stretch carrying passengers. Good thing too, because we were pretty sure that at each twist the front of the bus was hanging out over the edge!!

After reaching the bottom, we proceeded v-e-r-y slowly up the straight portion of what could be best described as "washboard" except that would be an insult to washboards all over the world, finally reaching the summit where we saw.....................................nothing but clouds. According to the lady in the small refreshment stand, it had been completely clouded in when she arrived at 7:30 that morning.

Well, at least we did see something before the clouds blocked the view entirely; we're just not sure how much of the caldera site we were seeing.

So of course we backtracked our way along the same bumpy winding road to the flat Sand Plain, and this time we stopped for a few minutes to walk around on the volcanic sand and pick up a few rocks. Lava rocks are very light, although their density depends on the temperature of the lava and the conditions under which it hardened, so some that we picked up were heavier than others.

And Monica was here, too.

Even though the ground is nothing but volcanic debris, plants
and flowers eventually begin to grow

Our companion bus behind us as we wove our way back
down the mountain. These drivers were amazing.

One of the most interesting parts of being up beyond the clouds is watching them dominate the sky, drifting in and out of valleys and shrouding us in mist and fog. Here are a couple of photos to show you what we mean:

Lunch was served in a restaurant in the small town of Bourg-Murat, where the road to the volcano begins. Again, it was a creole-style meal, and just as tasty as the one we'd had in Mauritius.

Our first course was a local specialty - heart of palm in bechamel
sauce with nutmeg and grated cheese topping. We'll make this
at home!

A selection from lunch: rice and beans with curries
of fish and pork. Curry just means it is served in a sauce,
nothing to do with curry powder or heavy spices.

 After lunch we also had been given entrance tickets to the Cite de Volcane, the volcano museum, which was right beside the restaurant. It was a very interesting display of the science of volcanoes, showcasing more specifically the volcanic origins of Reunion and the almost constant eruptions of Piton de la Fournaise.

After this stop we returned directly to the ship and were pretty much the last tour back on board. Once again we had some beautiful clouds in the early evening.

It was too bad that they stuck around as one of the later events of the evening was stargazing with one of the officers, weather permitting. The plan was to have three or four nights where the forward lights on the top deck would be turned off for an hour or so to allow the best viewing. We had been outside the first time and the view of the stars and the Milky Way band was phenomenal. It was too bad the weather went against us this time. We're keeping our fingers crossed for the next one.