Arriving in Réunion

Mark and I flew to Réunion from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on February 21. The flight was 10½ hours long, which was the longest flight I have taken since going nonstop from Toronto to Peking in 2011. I was most impressed by the young boy seated to my left, as he was well-behaved and always listened to his mother. As with the overnight flight from Toronto to Paris, I removed my contact lenses once boarding started, to make it easier to sleep. We flew via Air France for both legs of the trip and on these flights passengers are offered free wine and champagne, even in economy class. Wine makes me drowsy so I asked for a glass of each during each leg to help me nod off. The flight attendants gave me a small bottle of white wine yet served the champagne in a small flute.

When we arrived at the Roland Garros Airport, I found a washroom where I could put my lenses back in, and Mark waited for the luggage. It took a while for him to get it because in spite of the posting that our luggage would be on a certain carousel–where we noticed all of our fellow passengers grabbing theirs from–our bags were loaded onto a neighbouring carousel.

We needed to find out how to get to our hotel, so we talked to someone at an information desk in the baggage claim area who informed us that we needed to take a bus to the main bus station in Saint-Denis, the capital, then transfer to another bus, for a shorter route, to our hotel. Fortunately a bus was waiting at the airport and we paid 5€ for what we later realized was an express bus to the main station. We paid 1,60€ for our next bus fare and the driver told us where to get off. Mark had a map that directed us to the Hotel Select on Rue des Lataniers. I had been wearing black jeans, a long-sleeve shirt and light hooded jacket the entire time since leaving the airport. I certainly didn’t need to wear that much as it was 36°C outside. I changed into shorts and a tank top but once I got outside the humidity left ugly sweat stains all over my upper body. Bottles of water and sunscreen were musts in heat like this. We were now in the southern hemisphere during their summer and it would hit 37°C the next day.

Réunion, being an overseas department of France, is a first-world island, although our research beforehand in addition to the advice given to us by our friend Glenn informed us that its tourist infrastructure was not as developed as on the neighbouring island of Mauritius. The first thing you see when you enter the supermarket by our hotel is the bakery, with quivers of baguettes for the customers to pick up and go. As we walked by the market (even when we didn’t go in) we’d see people leaving with a baguette or two, carrying them around as if they were packing heat. While it can be expected to see many if not most products imported from France, we did delight in seeing some things that were native to Réunion–known as péi products, the kréol term for pays–such as jams and coffee. I bought three different kinds of réunionnais ground coffee in 250 g bags. We bought food to make our own breakfasts and lunches, yet went out each night for dinner.

We took walks every day and came back to the hotel in the late afternoon to rest by the pool. The sidewalks in Saint-Denis were narrow and we almost always had to walk in single file. People who use scooters or wheelchairs would find it hard to get around yet they probably knew which were the best streets to navigate. I liked the Rue de Paris because it was wide and lined with nineteenth-century colonial buildings and mansions. Some of them were converted into art galleries or the tourist office, however some appeared to have no function and looked as if they could use a renovation:

Standing on the Rue de Paris

Our Hôtel Select was located by a mosque and we heard a muezzin at sundown every day for Maghrib prayer.

We had four nights in Saint-Denis and for our dinners I ate Tunisian chicken couscous, a poké bowl at a Japanese restaurant, Chinese, then had kréol sausage and chicken from a takeout window we had passed by earlier on our last full day. It was an effort to find that place again, as we knew when we saw its schedule that morning that it would be closing in under half an hour and we had no firm idea where it was. We then tried to find an outdoor table and chairs where we could eat. We walked for a good long time then I said to Mark that we should just sit on some steps by a park since there were no public tables in sight.

After dinner every night we enjoyed gelato or ice cream at Igloo. I can even remember what delicious flavours I had each night: red pitaya ( = dragonfruit) on our first night, then black forest, chocolate mint, and finally lemon. The scoops were enormous–at least on our first time there–and I had to ask the guy who was preparing my cone if he was indeed giving me one single scoop (when it looked like he was overflowing the cone with two). Subsequent visits to Igloo saw staff serve stingier single-scoop cones. We were spoiled our first night there.

The above photos were taken at le Jardin de l’Etat in Saint-Denis

Ancienne défense du Barachois in the northern part of Saint-Denis

The park at le Barachois

I spoke French everywhere, and understood the French spoken to me, however I eavesdropped on the kréol rénioné.

Eskalié ti kat sou, written in rénioné. It is kréol for escalier petits quatre sous, indicating a time when it used to cost four sous (cents) to use the staircase.

Eglise Notre-Dame-de-la-Délivrance

Houses creeping up the hillside. At night, the hills would be dotted with lights, giving the illusion that there were tall apartment buildings in the distance. We knew that they didn’t exist, and what we were seeing were house lights stretching up to the summits.

The obligatory photo of a Région Réunion licence plate

It is no surprise that the first photos I took on Réunion were signs with a Scrabble context:

The best six-letter stem known as SATINE is a dress shop in Saint-Denis

Les Ptits Ouistitis is a child care centre. Ouistiti is a notorious vowel dump with the ghastly alphagram IIIOSTTU.

A sign outside a nursery school. Send your little boys there and they will come out as sissies. Flamboyants are red trees, native to Madagascar. I saw signs all over the island referring to flamboyant(s) which always roused a titter. Not a surprise that the very first picture I took on Réunion was that sign.

A boat at Anse des cascades

Lucky to get out of Réunion on the last flight to Mauritius before tropical cyclone Garance ravaged the island. We learned about the cyclone from the daily paper Le Quotidien. On our last day in Saint-Denis we went to the nearby grocery store to pick up some food for Mauritius, as well as some personal food and drink souvenirs, and the lines were l-o-n-g as everyone was stocking up in advance of the storm.

We flew out on February 26 at 12:05 after which all remaining flights were cancelled and the airport was closed. The flight lasted a mere 26 minutes. More on our Garance experience in the Mauritius post.

We booked a tour to circumnavigate the island and our adventures seeing all 360° of Réunion will follow.