So after some very unusual birthday celebrations, Michèle and I found ourselves lugging gigantic suitcases through Paris in order to get to the airport and jet off to La Réunion, AKA tropical paradise. I'm not exaggerating about the size of the suitcases. We had about 50Kg of checked baggage between us. I blame Michèle entirely. If you want to take my version of events, I showed up with a small rucksack (more of a purse really) while she lugged along six enormous trunks. Or maybe it was 10. My memory is a little hazy now. But I digress...
La Réunion has been the home of Will, one of our good friends, for the past year and to be honest it would have been rude not to have gone to visit him. We're just really nice like that. Huge thank you to Will here and all of his friends who showed us an amazing time when we came to visit! Will organised for us a full tour of the island, starting off with a week in the North East. We visited a few waterfalls and bassins (which are everywhere in La Réunion, it seems) and explored the towns in the north of the island, all the while trying to dodge the rain. At the risk of sounding pig-ignorant, it turns out that there's actually quite a lot of rain in a tropical climate. As a friend helpfully pointed out to me, it's the desert where you don't get any rain. My bad!
Thankfully, Will's well-practised at rain dodging by now, so we found plenty of beautiful places to escape to, even when the roads are flooded:
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The infamous nightclub in Saint Gilles is worth a mention here too, purely because of its name: Titty Twister. Apparently nobody knows what that actually means, but the owner just liked the sounds of the words. Make of it what you will. It made for a fun night anyways!
We then headed south for a week to enjoy the beautiful weather and beaches - it doesn't really rain in the south apparently. I was able to try surfing for the first time, which I'm now completely addicted to and I need to do it again soon, even though I wasn't that great at it. (Story of my life.) So far so good, until suddenly we found ourselves trekking up the highest point in the Indian Ocean - the Piton des Neiges. I'm still not entirely sure that I ever agreed to this. Extreme hillwalking is neither an interest nor a talent of mine, and 3,069m (10069 ft, imperial fans) high definitely counts as extreme in my book. However, I'm very proud of myself for having completed it, including the 4am start the second morning to reach the summit for 6am, even though we were completely soaked to the bone the entire way up and down. Proverbially speaking, it didn't rain but it POURED. We ended up taking off our raincoats halfway up because they weren't keeping any water out any more. It took me 4 days to dry out my walking boots afterwards. FML was definitely floating around my head a lot over those two days. Especially when I thought I'd been bitten by bed bugs in the gîte we stayed in overnight. That was never confirmed, but I definitely got mauled by something nasty because I had a full week of cold showers, antihistamines and people staring at me in the street afterwards. Bad times.
From this:
But this made it all worth it:
Don't worry, dear readers. The soggy misery was not to last, and despite what I just wrote, I had a fantastic time. It was character-building, as they say! The rest of our time was spent recovering on the beach and attempting to get a tan. This was desperately needed on my part since people were actually pointing and laughing at me in the street because of the blinding Persil whiteness of my skin. If I had a euro for the number of times I heard "regarde la blanche-là!"... (Translation: "look at that white girl over there!") After a good solid two months of trying to catch the sun, you'll be relieved to know that while I will never be mistaken for a mahogany tree, people have now stopped staring at me and I even have the hint of a tan line on my shoulders. I'm excited. I've never felt like I've had a tan before. I now have an officially normal, non-Irish skin colour. You probably wouldn't call that a tan, but beggars can't be choosers.
And all too quickly, it was time for the sorry car journey back to the airport and a sad goodbye to Will. I'm still not convinced that he'll actually come back to us in Bristol, he loves the place so much, and so it remains to be seen whether or not we'll see him again. I suppose if he did stay, then I'd just have to go out and visit him again. God, what a drag. The thing about Réunion is that there are far too many interesting things there for me to be able to put across to you in one blog, or even a dozen. It's a fascinating place with so much to offer and so if you ever find yourself in that part of the world (or a lot of money for a plane ticket), do not hesitate to go and explore this very unspoilt tropical paradise. Just don't forget your mosquito spray (and get a fake tan first if you're anything like me).
Next time: Return to Aix en Provence, a wee bit of Italy and the Côte d'Azur, and Bordeaux!
Bises,
Sophia xx
