1. Rivière des Marsouins
I was incredibly excited when I checked my e-mail to find a message from the kayak club about plans to kayak down the Rivière des Marsouins (porpoise river) in the East of the island. You've got to realise that the main reason I wanted to learn to kayak was so I could one day paddle down rivers and through rapids. Of course, being a beginner (along with most of the rest of the group who eventually went) I was given an inflatable kayak, and as it was the very beginning of the summer/wet season, the river and its rapids were pretty low and relatively tame, although extremely cold. That said, we had a fantastic time! Arriving there made me realise how much I miss grass and greenery in Saint Pierre: everywhere you looked there was green green vegetation, and the hillsides on either side of the river were covered in lychee trees. The lychee season is quite short, and at the beginning vendors charge anything up to 10€ a kilo, but I've been told that by the end of the season, when prices reach 1€ a kilo, people stop selling them because there are so many lychees and they become so cheap that it's no longer profitable to pick them to sell!* After an afternoon paddling downriver and playing on a tarzan swing, and since it was my first time in the East and I don't have a car, the instructor drove us all for a quick touristy stop to see the beautiful Bassin la Paix (see below). To top it off, there were two paille en queues (white-tailed tropicbirds, see the top of my blog), my favourite bird here, soaring and playing around on the air currents caused by the waterfalls - amazing!
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| The pool just above Bassin la Paix |
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| Chilling by the waterfall which pours into Bassin la Paix |
2. Grand Bassin
The biggest drawback to having two days off a week is the lack of people to share them with, but I have found an ingenious solution:
Recruit a freelance photographer!
Said photographer is a lovely American who is staying for a few months with another English assistant here in order to expand her travel photography portfolio (she has the most incredible photos! Take a look at them on her blog: portraitsoftheplanet.blogspot.com). On this particular day she bravely agreed to go on an adventure with me to the village of Grand Bassin, which is at the bottom of a steep valley and accessible only by foot (or cable if you are, for example, a crate of bananas). We took the bus from Saint Pierre, and I kept a watchful eye on the bus stop name at the side of the road and the list of stops on the timetable, ready for ours. I get a little nervous travelling to any stop which is not a main bus station. I'd like to think with good reason. Allow me to digress a little...
The bus system on Réunion is made up of different local bus companies within and around the main towns, and the car jaunes (yellow coaches) network which links up the whole island. The car jaunes are fantastic - great value for money, fairly reliable, often air-conditioned, and they even run on Sundays, although not as frequently as we'd like! They stop at pretty convenient places for touristy types, but stops are not compulsory. Obviously, like with any normal bus, you have to stick out your hand if you want picking up from a stop that is not an actual bus station. But there are no buttons to press for when you want to get off. No, the Réunion way is different: you clap your hands! Two claps is enough, unless of course they weren't loud or clear enough for the driver to hear over the séga music coming from the radio, in which case a hurried extra clap or two should suffice. I've even heard people do five claps, but honestly, that's getting a bit much. Perhaps I'm more cowardly than I thought, or perhaps I'm too British...but clapping for my stop of the bus is something I have been avoiding as much as possible. One of our first adventures via bus went a little awry when I wrongly assumed that, because the bus stop had a time next to it on the timetable it was an important stop and the driver would stop there whether he heard a clap or not. Consequently, we missed a town and ended up staying on the bus till the end of the line (it was raining and we didn't feel like getting out somewhere random). Lucky for us, the end of the line was right at the edge of the main lava field in the South-East of the island known as le Grand Brulé. The driver gave us fifteen minutes to go take a look before he turned around and headed back to Saint Pierre, and so we got our first vaguely volcano-related experience on the island and the trip was not a complete failure!
Back to Grand Bassin, several weeks later, and I finally clapped for a stop (just twice!!) and managed to get off the bus in the right place. After a bit of a walk down a road to a car park, we got a magnificent view of the valley, complete with steep ravines, the tops of creole houses and a small, blue pool with a waterfall along one side which was the end-point of our hike. Once we got down to the village, we were surprised to see that the houses were bordered by drystone walls like you'd find in the English countryside, although the agricultural side was a little different...we took an accidental shortcut through a smallholding consisting of banana trees and skinny chickens. From there it was an easy twenty-minute walk to the pool and waterfall, though for a while we couldn't figure out how to get down to it, and once we did we had to walk through the river holding our bags over our heads so they wouldn't get wet! Coming back up was seriously tough; I'll have legs of steel by the time I get back to England!
Recruit a freelance photographer!
Said photographer is a lovely American who is staying for a few months with another English assistant here in order to expand her travel photography portfolio (she has the most incredible photos! Take a look at them on her blog: portraitsoftheplanet.blogspot.com). On this particular day she bravely agreed to go on an adventure with me to the village of Grand Bassin, which is at the bottom of a steep valley and accessible only by foot (or cable if you are, for example, a crate of bananas). We took the bus from Saint Pierre, and I kept a watchful eye on the bus stop name at the side of the road and the list of stops on the timetable, ready for ours. I get a little nervous travelling to any stop which is not a main bus station. I'd like to think with good reason. Allow me to digress a little...
The bus system on Réunion is made up of different local bus companies within and around the main towns, and the car jaunes (yellow coaches) network which links up the whole island. The car jaunes are fantastic - great value for money, fairly reliable, often air-conditioned, and they even run on Sundays, although not as frequently as we'd like! They stop at pretty convenient places for touristy types, but stops are not compulsory. Obviously, like with any normal bus, you have to stick out your hand if you want picking up from a stop that is not an actual bus station. But there are no buttons to press for when you want to get off. No, the Réunion way is different: you clap your hands! Two claps is enough, unless of course they weren't loud or clear enough for the driver to hear over the séga music coming from the radio, in which case a hurried extra clap or two should suffice. I've even heard people do five claps, but honestly, that's getting a bit much. Perhaps I'm more cowardly than I thought, or perhaps I'm too British...but clapping for my stop of the bus is something I have been avoiding as much as possible. One of our first adventures via bus went a little awry when I wrongly assumed that, because the bus stop had a time next to it on the timetable it was an important stop and the driver would stop there whether he heard a clap or not. Consequently, we missed a town and ended up staying on the bus till the end of the line (it was raining and we didn't feel like getting out somewhere random). Lucky for us, the end of the line was right at the edge of the main lava field in the South-East of the island known as le Grand Brulé. The driver gave us fifteen minutes to go take a look before he turned around and headed back to Saint Pierre, and so we got our first vaguely volcano-related experience on the island and the trip was not a complete failure!
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| The lava field, steaming away after the rain. |
Back to Grand Bassin, several weeks later, and I finally clapped for a stop (just twice!!) and managed to get off the bus in the right place. After a bit of a walk down a road to a car park, we got a magnificent view of the valley, complete with steep ravines, the tops of creole houses and a small, blue pool with a waterfall along one side which was the end-point of our hike. Once we got down to the village, we were surprised to see that the houses were bordered by drystone walls like you'd find in the English countryside, although the agricultural side was a little different...we took an accidental shortcut through a smallholding consisting of banana trees and skinny chickens. From there it was an easy twenty-minute walk to the pool and waterfall, though for a while we couldn't figure out how to get down to it, and once we did we had to walk through the river holding our bags over our heads so they wouldn't get wet! Coming back up was seriously tough; I'll have legs of steel by the time I get back to England!
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| The ravine by Grand Bassin |
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| Got to swim at the end of a hike! The pool we were heading for, complete with rainbow in the waterfall. |
*I've since discovered that, sadly, this is false. After the joyous, golden period of 1€-per-kilo lychees at Christmas time, prices shoot back up and are now around 6€. Boo. Good job it's now mango time!
