Bathing on Reunion

  A different post this time. Please find below a travel piece based on my stay on the French island of Reunion in September of this year. Enjoy...   




     BATHING ON RÉUNION

I’m on my way, and travelling in style. Having achieved the sunny uplands of retirement, I feel I can at last afford to fly club-class, a luxury I never felt I could justify during my working life.

So I lie here, legs stretched out in my little pod. Around me, my well-heeled fellow passengers, many of whom seem far too young to pay for such opulence, seem to be sleeping, though perhaps, like me, they are faking. Eyes closed, coaxed into a semi-relaxed state by the gentle hiss of our two giant turbines, I try to work out where we might be. I refuse to look at my watch; to keep checking the time on a twelve hour plane flight is to invite madness, but dinner has been served and the lights are now dimmed. Eight miles above the surface of the Earth, protected from the void by only the thinnest of aluminum skins, I try to visualize a picture of the globe: perhaps we are above Venice or Trieste, racing down Croatia’s intricate coastline along the Adriatic. In another two hours we will pass over Alexandria, continuing to head south-east to follow the course of the Red Sea. Hours later, still in the dead of night, we will cut across the Horn of Africa to cross the equator. But we will still be over a thousand miles from our destination, just two degrees north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and four hundred miles off the eastern coast of Madagascar: Ile de la Reunion. 

As the world turns beneath us, I drift into a fitful sleep.

When the Portuguese navigator Diego Fernandez Pereira discovered the island in 1507 it was uninhabited. From all accounts they found the place inhospitable, and a hundred years later it was ceded to the French, who named it after its ruling dynasty of the time, Bourbon. An almost circular island of about eight hundred square miles, with a highly active volcano at its core, they found its precipitous volcanic terrain difficult, though for the same reason, its soil was fertile and the few available flatlands would later support burgeoning plantations of lentils and vanilla. During the Napoleonic wars, the island briefly belonged to the English who then, unwisely in my view, returned it to the French in 1814. Following the French Revolution it had been decided to remove the old name, redolent of imperial overtones as it was, and it was renamed Reunion. 

Arriving after sunset I was hoping to be able to study the night sky and its unfamiliar southern stars as soon as my wife and I had settled into our hotel room, but this proved harder than I had anticipated. True, I could see Alpha Centauri glowing brightly, but any hopes I would soon be able to view the galactic core of the Milky Way (not visible in the northern hemisphere) and its attendant mini-galaxies, the Greater and Lesser Magellanic Clouds, were soon crushed. Skies are rarely clear on Reunion, night or day. Its peaks climb nearly 4000 metres out of the Indian Ocean, trapping cloud and moisture in an intense orographic effect. Warm, moist air from the ocean is forced up, cooling and condensing into clouds and frequent rain in the interior, though thankfully less so on the coast where our hotel is situated. But the following day we soon realized how this works in practice: cloud begins to form mid-morning and by lunchtime covers most of the island. It remains warm, of course; this is, after all, a tropical island. But it is not a location suited for star-gazing. Instead we headed for our first bathing experience, in a tiny man-made lagoon just below the hotel. 

Sea-bathing is not recommended here, as guidebooks and hoteliers stress repeatedly. Its steeply shelving seafloor allows sharks to approach within feet of the shore; every year a few unwary swimmers are dragged from its waters, limbs missing or worse. Here though it was safe, and I ventured in, basking in the delightfully warm tropical sea. But there was a heavy swell, and the artificial reef was not high enough to stop the huge ocean waves crashing over it. I lost concentration watching perfect little rainbows form in the spray, and a big wave pushed me against a rock, causing me to lacerate a finger on the razor-sharp coral. I didn’t notice until my wife pointed out the drops of blood falling on the sand as I emerged. Beyond the reef, I could imagine the sharks picking up the scent and massing...

Later that day we followed the tourist trail and traced the eastern coast of the island to see the church of Notre-Dame des Laves. This was the site of a ‘miracle’ that occurred in 1977. Apparently a particularly aggressive lava flow had come roiling down the slopes of the Piton de la Fournaise, the volcano whose main fumarole lies only ten or so kilometres to the west, threatening to engulf the little church. Then, for reasons that are hard, or easy, to understand depending on your point of view, the lava diverged almost at the front door of the church before heading down to the sea. The black lava field is still there today, almost surrounding the church for all to see, and marvel at. Perhaps they shouldn’t have built a church there in the first place. It lies very close to an area known as the Grand Brûlée, a huge expanse of lava which marks the favoured direction of lava-flows from the volcano. The flows may be dated by studying the vegetation that has formed on them. Until it cools, nothing. But within a year, bright green mosses and furry-white lichens, like lambswool, begin to take hold. Soon after, ferns, bamboo and small palm trees are shooting up in Reunion’s ideal growing climate. I will never forget watching my wife dancing about over those lava fields, delighting in finding new plant growth in lava fields that looked so fresh it seemed scarcely possible they had cooled sufficiently for germination to take place. This is what she came for, what she has dreamed of doing for over twenty years. Tomorrow we shall journey into the interior and see the great fumarole for ourselves. 

Rising at dawn to take advantage of the brief window of clear skies, we were greeted at breakfast by the hotel dog. A scrupulously disciplined animal despite his uncertain lineage, he waited patiently at our table until my wife relented and gave him a minute scrap of bacon. This disappeared in a flash and he was ready for more, but I could see a waiter looking at us and discouraged her from giving him any more. Nonetheless, doggie sensed he had made a friend.

The drive up to Piton de la Fournaise is little over twenty kilometres, but the road being narrow, busy and packed with hairpins, the journey takes over an hour. When we reached the car park there was an extraordinary sight: over eighty hire-cars parked in neat lines, and whether they were Citroens, Peugeots or Renaults, they all looked just the same; by some convention, every one was white. We had all come to take the famous 10 kilometer hike to the main crater, but it had finished erupting only a few days before and was not yet assumed to be safe. In consequence the entrance to the path down into the crater was barred by a padlocked steel grille. Among the small crowd of hikers the sense of disappointment was palpable. One angry young man jerked on the chains with all his might, his actions more symbolic than hopeful. But my wife refused to be downcast, and found an alternative walk along the wall of the crater, and we were treated to some amazing sights: a landscape devoid of vegetation, pockmarked with craters, and everywhere hues of red ochre, nut-brown and pitch-black. It resembled not so much a lunar landscape as an image from the surface of Mars. 

After an hour we decide to turn back. It is 2500 metres above sea level here, and we can feel it, not so much in our lungs as in a leaden sensation that afflicts the legs after even minimal exertion. We are glad to get back to the car and eat our brie-filled rolls, filched from this morning’s breakfast table. High above us a black kite soars with infinite grace, scanning the crater floor for anything foolish enough to move. 

The weather behaved predictably. By eleven it was ‘cloudy-bright’ and cooling off; by twelve most of the interior was covered in a dense blanket of cloud and it was cold. Only the coast and a half-mile strip inland remained bathed in brilliant sunshine. We raced back down the mountain to embrace it.

                                                 *

At breakfast the following morning our new friend was waiting. When she was sure no one was watching, my wife went into the buffet, took a plate and on it placed three chicken sausages, four rashers of bacon and a generous helping of scrambled eggs. This meal, which would have cost a visitor to the hotel thirty euros, was consumed by our shaggy friend in little more time than it takes to say “Woof!” I would imagine that this represents, not only for our puppy, but I dare say for any other canine ever born, the finest dog’s breakfast in history. He was our permanent companion until we left the hotel an hour later, and we could see him sitting at the gate watching us as we drove away, a look of ineffable love on his doggy features.

We stopped for a coffee further up the coast. Just outside the cafe was a tree festooned with the nests of weaver-birds, the brilliant yellow birds darting in and out of them repeatedly. I couldn’t take my eyes off them until, beyond the tree, I noticed how inviting the little bay down from us looked. I asked the barista if it was safe to bathe there. 

“Non. Je suis desole.”

In my schoolboy French, I pointed out that there was a surfer out there making the most of the magnificent breakers. In his schoolboy English he replied:

“Yes, but he will be aware of the risks.”

I asked if he knew the nearest location where we could swim safely, and he directed us to a natural lagoon about three miles up the coast. Coral reefs present a barrier for sharks, leaving a narrow strip of safe water between reef and shore. We lost no time driving up there and taking to the waters. A good sign: plenty of other people were in the sea already, and being the weekend, most of them were locals out for the day. They would know which areas were safe. The water was superb, warm and clear, though to my surprise there was still a powerful undertow which dragged swimmers parallel to the shore. Swimming against it was virtually impossible, and even standing knee deep in the water it was hard not to be swept off your feet. But you got used to it quickly, learning to swim at an angle to get back to the beach. It became a kind of game, providing yet another of those idyllic episodes this island provides in abundance.

We would have stayed longer, but we wanted to reach our next hotel before the weather turned. Cilaos lies almost in the middle of the island, and the road to it includes over four hundred hairpins and sharp corners over its thirty kilometre length. For all I know this is a record: I have driven over several Alpine passes in my time, but I have never encountered anything like it. By some miracle I achieved it without any damage to our car, despite the surprisingly heavy traffic, not even flicking off a wing mirror, something I have often done when driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. And it was hard to keep my mind on task, because around every corner was a new, amazing vista of jagged peaks, gnawing at the sky, towering rock walls, five hundred metres high, and terrifying ravines of vivid green, their floors hidden in deep shade.

The following morning, in brilliant sunlight, we set out to make a four hundred metre descent into one of those ravines to find a noted waterfall. Downhill all the way, negotiating a series of steps cut into the basalt, we often needed to step aside to allow younger and fitter hikers to overtake. I consoled myself with the thought that for many of them I was not only old enough to be their father, at sixty-eight I was old enough to be their grandfather. Half way down we came across a glorious plunge pool. Ten metres across, about two deep, with a huge, magical boulder at its centre, its waters, reflecting the lush vegetation that crowded around it, seemed to glow with an opalescent, blue-green radiance. We stripped off, caring little for the astonished glances of passers-by, and immersed ourselves in its depths. Allowing the sun’s warmth to dry ourselves off, we were ready to put our clothes back on and proceed within minutes.

Half an hour later we were at the floor of the gorge, scrambling with some difficulty over the huge boulders that surrounded the river, scoured smooth as polished marble by the passage of water over many millennia. But what was surprising was how far away from the river some of these boulders were. Some of them were a full twenty metres above the riverbed. What it implied was that on many, many occasions in the past, this fairly docile river must have been a vast, raging torrent of floodwater. And then I remembered. Reunion lies along the path of cyclones and tropical storms which regularly track west across the Indian Ocean, and its orographic effect ensures that prodigious amounts of rain are dumped upon it. Indeed, Reunion holds the world record for rainfall in a twenty-four hour period. Starting on the night of January seventh, 1966, Cyclone Denise passed over the island and released no less than seventy-two inches of precipitation. To put it in context, that represents the better part of two years of rain in Cardiff falling in a single day. So we are forced to conclude that this modest little waterfall, so innocent-looking in this dry season, must, once or twice each year, look more like Niagara.

To our relief, the sky clouded over during our exhausting ascent back up the ravine, and indeed, a few drops of rain did fall, almost as if conjured by my thoughts down at the riverside.

                                                   *

On our last full day on Reunion I decided to take my final bathe: in the pool at our hotel. Unfortunately, it proved the only discordant note in an otherwise blissful sojourn. I had watched as a tall young Frenchman dived in and swam two twenty metre lengths under water. I did likewise and achieved a single length submerged; not bad I felt, considering I was probably three times his age. He was as pale as a bedsheet, pencil-thin, and his face, which wore a permanently dour expression, was framed by a full, meticulously trimmed beard. Then he was joined by his partner, whose face, as pale as his, was characterized by that kind of angular severity so typical of many French women. She proceeded to wrap her long legs around him, and lock her outstretched hands around the back of his neck. Pelvises locked together, they drifted around the pool for many minutes, not smiling but staring intently into each other’s eyes. I soon got out and went back to my lounger, but they continued in this way, right in my eye-line, for another twenty minutes before I decided I had had enough. I stalked up to the hotel and collared an assistant manager.

“There are people down in the pool simulating sex! It’s not good enough!”

She stared at me for the briefest time before diverting her gaze and replying:

“Well, I’m not going to say anything to them.”

With that she walked away, and as the truth of it was that I didn’t have the balls to confront them myself, I retreated to our room. I was a little shocked at the under-manager’s complacency, but worse was to come later when during our evening meal I told my wife what I had done. She exploded.

“What the hell did you do that for? Are you nuts?”

This stunned me at first. Normally we are highly supportive of each other’s views, and her condemnation of my actions left me dumbstruck for a moment. Finally I spoke up. Such arrogant behaviour, I maintained, would never be tolerated at home. 

“I’d have said get a room, but...”

“I know, but this isn’t home, darling, it’s France. Just think for a moment. If this were Cannes or St Tropez, no one would turn a hair.”

She was right. I had been a fool to complain. On the flight home I reflected on the incident and why it had upset me so much. Was it envy of their youth and their uninhibited display of sexuality? Or was there something to my grievance, that people, French or otherwise, should indeed behave in a more circumspect manner in public places? I remained undecided, but as we retraced our route back to northern climes, I did resolve that, should anything like it happen again, it would be better to keep my mouth shut and just not look. And maybe, even relax a little...