"I ship cheap chips in cheap chip ships"
and you'll see why I found it amusing! There were "sheep" all over the place...This week there have been a few events going on. One of them was a braderie or foire commerciale, a temporary market along the main street of Saint Pierre* which lasted for ten days. Apparently these happen twice a year, and all the shops dig into the stock cupboards for everything they've been unable to sell and put it on stalls just outside the front of their shops at reduced prices. Many of the shops just mark a few things down and put them outside anyway, but the bazars don't even change the prices! You can usually find at least two or three bazars on each street in the centre of Saint Pierre, and they're not hard to miss. A lot of people I've met don't like them and it's easy to understand why: they are the ultimate destination for cheap and tacky imported household objects. Still, they're pretty useful if you need to furnish a completely empty flat with things that need to remain functional for a maximum of seven months.
Another week-long event was the Réunion Film Festival which took place in the west of the island at the touristic hotspot of Saint-Gilles-les-Bains. Some of the film showings took place on a giant screen on the beach and we caught the last one on Friday evening. There was a great atmosphere: rows of deckchairs had been put out in front of the screen, but many more people had come in big family groups and had brought rugs and camping chairs and proceeded to unload drinks and picnics for the film. (NB The Réunionese family is a champion picnicker: Sunday is picnic day, and you will see any beach full of picnicking families and their friends...but a family picnic here is not sandwiches and crisps with some interesting dips...it lasts all day and it's full meals and huge cool boxes full of drinks and music and preferably a generator!). Being slightly less prepared we copied the family in front of us and heaped up loads of sand as a back/head rest to settle in for the film. We then realised that, of course, the film would be in French with no subtitles...but what did it matter if we only understood half of the plot when we got to watch it for free, under the stars and ten metres away from the sea?
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| Film Festival screening at Saint-Gilles |
And to round off today's rather delayed blog entry, a little anecdote on a more regular activity I've taken up here. I've joined the local canoe and kayak club and have been going twice a week. It's a sport I've wanted to do for years, but have never really got round to starting. On Saturday I went out to sea in a kayak for the first time. As I'm a beginner, the instructor gave me a different, presumably more stable kayak than the others. I'd like to think it was also designed to be more easily carried away by wind and waves, but some would say that's me trying to come up with an excuse. Anyway, it's true that Saturday was a pretty windy day and the sea seemed rather choppy, but we headed out from the port nevertheless. As soon as I hit open sea, my kayak (not me, obviously) started veering to the right. Naturally, I paddled hard on the right hand side of the kayak. I kept drifting right. The instructor, Guillaume, started yelling at me to turn left and come away from the bigger waves, and all I could say was "I'M TRYING!!!" and continued to paddle frantically on the right to no avail. In the end, Guillaume scooted across (he made it look so easy!!) and clipped a rope from the back of his kayak to the front of mine. How shameful. I had a wonderful time out at sea - it was beautiful! - but hopefully next time I'll be able to steer by myself, although I confess I truly appreciated the rope when my arms got tired and I had a sneaky little rest while Guillaume towed me...
When we got back in, we practised a little esquimautage (Eskimo roll), and in the afternoon I went to étang-salé with my housemates again to play in the waves (but this time wearing trainers!). Result? I thought I was getting a nosebleed, but it turned out I had an awful lot of saltwater stuck in my nose and face somewhere - I had to stand with my head tipped upside-down for a good five minutes to drain it all out!
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| Possibly my favourite sunset so far, viewed from our balcony (just so that there's another picture...the post was looking a bit bare) |
*Don't trust Google Maps in Réunion! Saint Pierre is DEFINITELY not built out into the sea...
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