July 8th, 2026
After that special moment of seeing Piton de la Fournaise and driving back out of the National Park, we headed back eastward to the coast and the plan was to round the south end of the island stopping to see sights enroute.
First was in Saint-Anne – a weirdly strangely decorated church from 1857. It was closed so we couldn’t see inside.
Then in Saint Rose we stopped to see the “Corbett Memorial”. This was dedicated to Robert Corbett who fought in the Napoleonic war for the British and was killed here. (Corbett was Fran’s maiden name)
We next drove through several lava fields along the south coast from 2002, 2004, 2007 and one earlier this very year where we saw trees that had been pulled out and a spot that still had steam coming out. We did take a short walk on some of the older lava.
The 2026 eruption was still pretty fresh – it was amazing that the road had been rebuilt!
We then stopped at Cap Méchant where we saw crashing waves on basalt cliffs – spectacular! We walked along the cliffs to various view points.
Our final stop was Grande Anse – a beach touted as having white sand with basalt cliffs. It was hard to find parking but we snagged one outside the parking lot and walked back. Well, the sand was not white and the cliffs were not so impressive.
Note: There are few beaches in Réunion where you can actually swim due to strong currents and sharks! Some beaches are very sheltered or they have created enclosed tidal pools as shown here:
Doug received a call from the helicopter company on our way back to the car and our helicopter flight is a go for tomorrow! We hope that holds true. It will be slightly earlier than we had booked but we’ll take it.
We then made our way westward to the city of St. Pierre where we had booked a small 2 bedroom apartment with private parking for the night. It had everything we needed including a washing machine. Doug went out to grab us some odds and ends for dinner while Fran got the laundry started and she showered. She managed to get all the laundry hung on the provided drying rack on our little terrace and we settled in for the night.
Amazingly, 90% of the laundry was dry by bedtime and we went to bed on the early side in order to get up before 6. We had to be at the heliport by 6:45 for our 7:30 tour.
We checked in a bit early and the other two couples on our tour, were already there. We watched a safety briefing and then were told that instead of a 55 minute tour it would be reduced by ten minutes because the Piton de la Fournaise was under cloud cover and we would not be able to fly over it. Darn! That made yesterday’s sighting that much more special. They said we would be getting a refund for that missing ten minutes – that was new!
Well, the flight was nothing short of fabulous! – the scenery has few words to describe it. Unfortunately for the first ten minutes of the flight, we had the sun was on our side of the copter and that made photos difficult but it was mesmerizing and photos do not do it justice. The weather was just about perfect and we were very pleased we splurged to do this. We flew over all three cirques seeing so many places you cannot drive to and hiking in these mountains wouldn’t be easy including the Piton des Neiges – the tallest peak in the Indian Ocean (3070 m / 10,072’). (Doug had considered climbing it when we first planned to come here but bringing along hiking boots, poles and he necessary warm clothing required did not work out.)
This volcano is believed to have formed at least five million years ago, emerging from the Indian Ocean probably more than three million years ago, thus giving birth to the island of Réunion. It has been inactive for over 12,000 years . Despite its name and the cooler temperatures atop it, it rarely sees snow – it is believed it got its name from a significant snowfall in 1735.
As mentioned abouve, due to the sun’s reflection on the window where Fran was seated, many of the photos at the beginning of the flight, were not great, videos even worse but we’ve cleaned up what we could and hope you enjoy these and it inspires you to visit this island.
The pilot, Fred, gave commentary in French and English (only one couple did not speak English – the other was bilingual) and Fran’s pretty sure he didn’t translate everything but it wasn’t a big deal. Upon landing, we all got photos with the copter and a selfie with Fred.
If we’d been able to fly over Piton de la Fournaise, this is what we would have seen:
Mid-morning, we drove up into our second cirque – Cilaos. The drive inland from the west coast is about 40 km / 25 mi and is said to have over 400 turns! Doug didn’t count them as he was too busy keeping us on the road! It was a very scenic drive and it was so cool to know we’d flown over it all this morning.
Once we reached the town of Cilaos we drove to the far side of it to La Roche Marvielleux (the marvelous rock) where we had stupendous views over the city and could take in all the surrounding mountain peaks and rock walls.
Then it was into the city where we made one visit to the Maison de Broderie where the old art of drawn thread embroidery continues to this day. On the first floor is a little exposition showing many amazingly intricate pieces and upstairs you can watch a couple of women actually at work making things. Surprisingly, there was little for sale but really, what we were going to do with something like this anyway?
he introduction of embroidery was due to the efforts of Angele MacAuliffe, the daughter of a doctor who worked at a hot-spring clinic in the early 20th century. The techniques that she introduced have scarcely changed since, and the popularity of “Days of Cilaos” embroidery is due in a large part to this stability and tradition.
We then strolled the main drag admiring a town with such a stunning location and then stopped at a boulangerie for a bit to eat. We could sit outside here and admire the views.
We had hope to stopped at the sugar cane factory in Saint-Louis on our way back to the coast, but after asking a local to see about booking (as they website required that you do this by phone) we learned they are closed this time of year. Figures. Oh well, we’re sure we can find such a tour somewhere else in the big ole world.
We had heard from the owner of today’s accommodation that we could check in any time after 10am so we began the drive back down that windy road to the coast.
We drove through 3 tunnels twice each today.
We arrived in Saint-Gilles on the upper west coast at Les Emeraudes just after 1pm and after looking for the person to let us in, got shown the place and we settled in for two nights. Here we have a studio apartment with private bath, AC, WiFi, a TV, a small balcony and access to a private pool out back. It’s a little dated but it’s clean and will do us nicely. The temperature here is around 30C / 86F and sunny. The AC is welcome relief from the humidity.
Doug went for a walk to check out the beach – the one closest to us was not great but the one a little further down, was quite nice and we went down there for sunset and dinner.
Saturday was a no driving day as we had booked two nights here. We awoke to sunny skies but not as hot as yesterday. Doug did his long run and found an even nicer beach a bit north of here at Boucan Canot. Around 11:30 we drove up there and luckily found a parking spot a couple of blocks from the beach before walking over for a nice lunch at the beach’s edge. There were a few people on the beach and a few surfers – despite signs saying “no swimming”. This was a pretty nice beach too.
After some really good wood fired pizza we strolled a bit taking our leftovers. We returned home to put away the leftovers before going to check out what is supposed to be the nicest beach at L’Eermitage-de-las-Bains. It is very long and we found parking at the top end and walked over. It’s rather narrow and very sloped.
We, being the beach snobs we are, were not so impressed. Even though there are many resorts near the shore, there is parkland between them and the water and no umbrellas or chairs.
We walked a bit further down hoping to find a place that might rent chairs to sit and read (remember you can’t got swimming although we did see a few in the water and some surfing). No luck so we walked into town to a grocery store to pick up fixings for dinner and went home. By now the sky was becoming overcast.
Sunday we awoke to overcast skies with threats of rain. We didn’t have to check out until noon so we eat some bananas, bread and jam for lunch before leaving.
Today’s sightseeing was to get as far into the Cirque Mafate as drivable – this is the least accessible cirque. The coastal part of the drive showed that this side is much drier than the other:
This took us inland to the village of Dos d’Ane where there was a fantastic lookout – Cap Noir. Despite being overcast the views were out of this world.
For our last night in Réunion, we got a small apartment in a home in the town of La Possession near the country’s main port called La Port! We had a one bedroom apartment with a full kitchen, bathroom, washing machine, living room as well as an outside balcony with views of the ocean (and port). There was of course, WiFi and AC but only in the bedroom although a fan was provided in the living room. It was very comfy and we had a quiet night.
Doug went for a run in the morning, we showered and left around 8 taking the new offshore viaduct built on this corner of the island.
The Nouvelle Route du Littoral (NRL) is a massive, multi-billion-euro coastal highway on Réunion Island designed to replace the dangerous cliffside road between Saint-Denis and La Possession. Built directly over the Indian Ocean to eliminate the risk of deadly rockfalls and cyclone flooding, it is widely regarded as one of the most expensive and complex road engineering projects in French history. It is currently over 9 km long with a new section under construction. By completion in 2030 it will be over 12 km long. It has three lanes in both directions and accommodates not only vehicles but cyclists and pedestrians as well. It has been designed to last 100 years against extreme tropical maritime swells and ship impacts
It was impossible to get shots of this while driving it so here is a screenshot from our mapping app, Organic Maps.
We got to the car rental office around 8:30 in order to drop off the car (which again was no simple task dealing with their staff and turned out we had to pay to have it washed!).
We drove a total of 570 km / 355 mi on this island circumnavigating it and dipping inland three times at various points.
We were taken to the airport by shuttle just before nine and couldn’t check in quite yet for our flight back to Mauritius which was a connecting flight for our final destination of the island of Rodrigues. The flight actually left early and we landed five minutes after we were supposed to have left! How often does that happen!?!
Now we had a four hour layover for our second flight. We had some lunch and chilled while waiting to get to the boarding gate. Our luggage was checked all the way so we didn’t have to deal with that.
Speaking of luggage, as mentioned in the last blog, we are traveling with only one backpack and one roller board carry on. While most airlines allow a 23 kg / 50 lb checked bag, the flight to and from Rodrigues Island has a limit of 15 kg / 33 lb and the carry on bags are limited to 5 kg / 11 lb. So we really had to pack smart to get over here. Fran’s bag weighed in at 14.7 kg / 32.4 lb and Doug’s at 13.9 kg / 30.6 lb and both our backpacks were about 6 kg / 13.2 lb and allowed – phew! We have a fair number of electronics and batteries that cannot go in a checked bag.
We really enjoyed this island and recommend a visit here especially if you enjoy rugged hiking (not Fran’s thing) as the Cirques provide so much of that with many multi day hikes. It’s very French with little English signage (except STOP signs!) and many menus are also only in French although we found many of the wait staff does speak English. The infrastructure is up to EU standards including large grocery stores and hotels.
Fun facts about Réunion:
- The world’s most expensive vanilla come from La Réunion.
- The longest domestic flight from Paris, is to La Réunion Island which is 9347 km / 5808 mi and takes about 11 hours.
- It is the largest of the Mascarene Islands.
- Saint-Denis is the most populated city of the of the overseas departments of France.
- La Réunion has its own airline which is called Air Austral.
- The largest land animal on Réunion is the panther chameleon. The name comes from the chameleon’s markings. The panther chameleon is not endemic to La Réunion, but to Madagascar and has been introduced to the island from there.
- Raw sugar is the main export product from La Réunion.
- Over 40% of the island is national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
