Another beautiful day dawned on Reunion and again I was unable to stop stuffing my face at the amazing breakfast buffet. Put some warm French pastries in front of me (especially ones that contain chocolate) and I just can’t say no.
Feeling more confident in the right-hand side of the road driving thing, I set off for an early appointment with a canyoning group on the eastern side of the island, at Bassin la Paix.
Miraculously I managed to find Bassin La Paix, seeing as it as not marked on my map. It turned out to be in an incredibly beautiful part of the island – lushly green and tropical, with mountains, rainforest and waterfalls. It reminded me of that island in Jurassic Park 2 without the dinosaurs.
There wasn’t actually time for me to go canyoning (sigh) but it did look like a lot of fun. I took photos of the group as they climbed down ravines, jumped down waterfalls and swam through crystal clear pools.
I loved Cilaos so much that I just had to visit Hell-Bourg, another alpine town in a cirque. The road up to Hell-Bourg wasn’t nearly as treacherous as the one to Cilaos, but it was pretty hairy nonetheless. The scenery was no less dramatic than yesterday’s, with sweeping cliffs covered in thick foliage, spectacular waterfalls and vertigo-inducing drops down to deep valleys.
Hell-Bourg is as unbelievably pretty and quaint as Cilaos. There are the same cute little brightly painted Creole houses, and the so-French-you-feel-like-you’re-in-France boulangeries and cafes. Even the town library is in a lovely old Creole building.
I didn’t have time for a tour, but I had a quick peep at the Maison Folio, a 19th century villa surrounded by a beautiful garden. I wish I had had more time to explore Hell-Bourg, but I had a lunch booked for me at Chez Sabine, what I thought was a restaurant near St Andre.
Chez Sabine turned out to be literally Chez Sabine, the private residence of Sabine, who cooks local dishes on request for guests. Sabine had been told by the tourism board that I was arriving for lunch and that she should cook me her house speciality, which was some sort of meat (didn’t actually understand what it was). Sabine speaks no English and my French is rusty to say the least, but I managed to communicate that I didn’t eat meat. This was not ideal, but Sabine managed to make a plan.
Sabine filled me up with all sorts of deliciousness – for a starter, fat juicy prawns in a marie rose sauce with mango and grated raw pawpaw, and then an octopus curry with some curried local vegetables and rice. Dessert was pawpaw cooked in sugar with sweet potato mashed with butter, sugar and vanilla, and cream.
Sabine explained how she cooks all the dishes, and told me a bit about traditional Reunionais food and the spices that people use. I wish my French was a bit better, so that I could have caught all of what she said, but I think I got the gist of it. Sabine said that in Reunion people use a unique blend of spices, similar to masala, to make their carris (curry). Personally she prefers to make mild curries so that the flavours of the spices come through. Her octopus curry was really fragrant and tasty, so I could see what she was on about. She explained how to cook the pawpaw in sugar and said that Reunionais people aren’t really big into dessert, so they make a lot of desserty things with fruit. Vanilla, which is grown on the island, goes into a lot of their sweets.
I managed to roll into my car and drive back to St-Denis with an almost-bursting tum. There I met Maella, a French tour guide who was to take me around the city. Luckily Maella spoke good English, because it would have been a bit hard to do a three-hour tour of the city in French.
It was great to get a guided tour of St-Denis – I learned so much more than if I had walked around with my guidebook. Maella took me up the Rue de Paris, the oldest street in the city, and explained the history of St-Denis, Reunion and the beautiful old Creole buildings we saw.
One, La Maison Carere, was the home of a wealthy Reunionais trader in the early 20th century. The trader bloke had five rather unfortunate daughters, only one of whom ended up getting married. He had to build extra storeys onto his house so that the other daughters could continue to live at home with their parents.
Maella told me a lot about the culture of the island. She’s French and has only lived on the island for a year and a half, but she knows a lot about Reunion. She taught me a few Creole words: zoreilles (the ears) is what local people call the French who move to the island, because they have to strain to understand the Creole spoken on the island. Maella says that the vibe of the island can be explained in one Creole word: tilempe. It means slow and chilled out. It’s not quite how I would describe Reunion’s drivers, but on the whole it encapsulates the tropical island’s tempo.
On the corner of Rue de Paris, in the garden of an old Creole mansion, there is a wooden gazebo with slatted walls with big gaps. Maella told me that it was where the ladies of the house would sit and spy on people walking on the street. If there one of their friends came past, they would lean over the wall and have a bit of a la di la fe (gossip) session. Apparently la di la fe is big here – my guidebook says it’s a national pastime.
We visited a Chinese temple, glimpsed at a Tamil temple and saw France’s first mosque. Maella took me to a fruit and veg market which smelled like pineapples and vanilla. I tried a grenadine, which is a kind of orange granadilla with white seeds that tastes like pineapple. I love food markets and try and visit them wherever I travel. This one was amazing – everything looked so fresh and delicious. There were all sorts of unfamiliar fruits and veggies that looked interesting like boef du Coeur (heart of beef), chou (a pale green vegetable that’s cooked in gratins) and small bright green mangoes with vivid yellow flesh. I bought some sliced mango and pineapple with chopped fresh chilli, which tasted of tropical island.
Another busy day ended with a tropical downpour, and me planning to go out in St-Denis in the evening but instead falling asleep on my computer in my hotel room.
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