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Ile de la Réunion


Loiseau
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Just come back from a week in Réunion, so I thought I would put a post on this little-used section!

It was funny to be using euros when in such an exotic setting (off Madagascar, in case you were wondering).

Dishes eaten included swordfish, shark and curried goat.

Only vegetable seems to be rice.

Magnificent scenery.  Lots of surfers, paragliders, kite-surfers and hearty hikers.

It's definitely a place for the young and fit holidaymaker.  Even driving on the mountain roads seems to qualify as an extreme sport, thanks to the deep drainage gullies that run along the unprotected edges of the carriageway.

Angela

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There's an amazing new road called the Route des Tamarinds, that replaces a big chunk of the N1 (I think that's the road that ran around the perimeter of the island). The part that is still the N1 runs along below those sheer rocks; we had lunch with some local expat French who told us that the falling rocks kill at least one person a year on the road, and that the most terrifying thing is to be stuck on that road in a rush-hour traffic jam on the way into St-Denis! The whole cliff is shrouded in wire-netting, and there is also some specially-huge stone-catching apparatus on one section that is presumably the most dangerous.

On the diametrically opposite side of the island, of course, there are the lava flows from the volcano that seem to cut through the main road every couple of years or so. It was interesting to see panels with the date of each relevant eruption. We chickened out of the mountain roads after a couple of days and booked a helicopter flight over the interior, which was truly awesome.

Angela
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Talking of "chickening out" , a colleague (French) once extended his business trip into a few days' holiday and was joined by his GF. They were going to do the helicopter trip over the volcano, but arrived late and missed the one they'd hoped to take. Whilst waiting for the next one, they heard, and saw, the helicopter they should have been on crash into the side of the volcano, killing all on board. They chickened out, too.

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I was actually staying with French friends who live in St-Leu, but I think there are plenty of B&Bs and gites etc, in normal French style.  Plus an assortment of hotels.

Restaurant food was quite expensive - except for the delicious samosas in the market at St-Paul (0,30€ each!).

And the locals moan about how much extra everything costs that comes in from the "metropole".  You can see their point.  I bought a French mag at the airport en route home on which the cover price was 1,60€; but an extra label proclaimed the Reunionnais price to be 2,30€.

I travelled with a friend, from the UK. We booked our Air France flights in January (!) and they cost about £750, from Paris Orly to St-Denis de la Reunion.  It's a 10.5 hour flight.

The other option, for those based in the UK, is to fly British Airways from London to Mauritius, and then Mauritus to La Reunion (less than an hour, I think).  The price for the long-haul flight was comparable, but when we looked into it we found that the flights between La Reunion and Mauritius were more expensive than London-Paris, so that's why we opted for the Air France flights. (And in the end we did the London-Paris legs on our air miles  [:)]).   Oh, I think the timings did not work out either; we would have had to spend a night in Mauritius each way.

I would not fly with Air France again though.  Surly and grudging service, terribly cramped seats (and I have  short legs!), and they actually cancelled our outward flight from Paris (probably can't blame them for that; they had to take an aircraft out of service), so we missed the first day of our holiday (they  put us in an Ibis hotel at Orly for the night).

Air Austral is starting direct flights to La Reunion from Nantes and Bordeaux from Feb 2011.  People say they are a much better airline, but I have no personal evidence on which to base that.

Angela

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It's very difficult to find a map that is up to date enough to show the autoroute-like Route des Tamarinds, which opened only a year ago and speeds traffic down the west side of the island, from St-Denis down to St-Pierre.

We picked up our hire car at midnight, and set out armed with the IGN map that we had obtained in London.  It proved mystifying as, from about La Possession onwards, the new road follows an entirely different route from the N1 (former main road, near the coast) - the only main road shown on our map. 

The new highway - a fantastic feat of engineering - cuts a swathe much farther inland, high above the coast.  Its exits are not numbered, so you need to have a good idea of the name of the place you should turn off.  (The best clue we got of our location was from the signs showing names of the ravines that the road crossed, which we could relate to the IGN map.)

On day three we came across a helpful tourist office in La Possession, and among the various bits of useful documentation that they gave us was just one rather arty map showing the new road.

Even the IGN maps that were on sale in La Reunion did not have the 2009 Route des Tamarinds on them.

So look before you buy...

Angela

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Google Maps is your friend in these circumstances.

A pretty good satellite image of the island including Route des Tamarinds HERE

Image is from 2010 so well up to date.

I didn't realise that Reunion (or Mauritus for that matter) is so small.  I imagined them to be much bigger somehow.

(Is the airport really called Roland Garros? I thought that was something to do with tennis)

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That's really weird that the new road is labelled N1 on GoogleMaps.

I am sure that, on the ground, as it were, the N1 is the old main road, that runs along the coast.  And the two merge somewhere SW of St Denis.

Yes, Roland Garros is the very same.  He was a WWI aviator born in St-Denis!  See Wikipedia

Seemingly he liked a game of tennis when in Paris.

Angela

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