kaszeta

After finishing at the Saga du Rhum, it was time for lunch. We headed to the most excellent Kaz à Léa (Creole for "Lea's House") in Saint-Pierre. And hey, how can I resist... it has "Kaz" in the name!



I forgot the French name for this dish, but it was basically a chicken and Chinese sausage stir fry. Very delicious, and had a distinctly herbal note common to many dishes I had on Reunion, with all the unusual culinary traditions combining on the island:



Carol was more adventuresome, getting the Carri Zourite:



Yup, your standard Reunion-style Carri, with a rich flavorful tomato-based sauce, rice, beans, and the ever-present rougail... But the carri is... octopus:



This was probably the second best carri of the trip (the best came later in Sainte-Rose)

kaszeta

Then, our coastal time was drawing to a close, by the end of the day we needed to be at our next accomodations, the Gîte du Volcan on the rim of the outer caldera of the Piton de la Fournaise, the island's active volcano. But first we enjoyed a bit more of the coast:



After leaving the coast of Réunion, we were headed inland, but our route took us through the Plaines des Cafres.

Named after the Cafres, black slaves who hid in the area during and before the 18th century, it's a high plateau area that's stunningly scenic, full of small little mountain farms, feeling almost like an alpine area in Europe. It's also where much of the agriculture that I was wondering about, like the cattle raising, was happening:



Driving through Les Plaines des Cafres was almost magical at times, since the cloud layer kept dancing across the plains and we'd dart in and out of heavy, heavy rains, periodically emerging into scenes like this:



Like the rest of the island, the roads of Les Plaines des Cafres were also topsy-turvy:



But we soon found ourselves on the lip of the Plaine Des Remparts (Plain of Cliffs), a surprisingly barren, flat bowl of eroded basaltic sand left over from the collapse of a previous caldera from the Piton:

kaszeta

After a bit more driving, we found ourselves at Gîte du Volcan was the next place we stayed, at Pas de Bellecombe is situated on the northern rim of the Piton de la Fournaise. While rustic, it's got quite a pleasant view. It doesn't look over the volcano, instead looking out over the river valley to the north:





Like the other mountain Gîtes, it's got quite the impressive dining room as well:



And a nice balcony. The perfect spot for kicking back with a bottle of Phoenix ("The Famous Beer of Mauritius", and the second-most likely beer you'll find on the island after La Dodo) and watching the sunset:

kaszeta

And like the other Gîtes, dinner was a pleasant experience as well. Gîte du Volcan is very busy, so our dinner crowd was about 100 people, all communally dining.

Here was our menu:



The entree was a surprisingly pleasant soup that was primary chouchou (not pictured, since it was basically just a bowl of slightly green sludge). The main course was two different Carrie (Pork and vegetable, and Swordfish), with beans and rice. Delicious, as always, and here the rougail was an interesting lemon, cucumber, and hot-pepper mix that I have yet to duplicate:



And dessert? Some very pleasant geranium cake, and the ever-present rhum arrange (in this case, tamarind flavored):

kaszeta

The next day was our hike. The hike to Crater Dolomieu on Piton de la Fournaise is rather impressive as well: you drop several hundred meters down steep steps and switchbacks, and then hike across the bottom of the crater to get to the central caldera. Here's a topo map of it, although the ever-changing conditions of the volcano make most maps obsolete quickly: each eruption changes at least the inner caldera, and even between eruptions both the inner and outer calderas tend to bulge and crack. Indeed, half of the trails shown here no longer exist since around 2012:



The Piton de la Fournaise is an active volcano. While it wasn't erupting while we were there, that's mostly a matter of timing, both a few months before, and a few weeks after our visit, the volcano erupted.

Since some of the events associated with the eruption can be pretty violent, they don't allow access during those times. So access to the volcano is controlled by this ominous looking gate at the rim:



Stepping through the gate, you immediately are gazing over the 8 km wide outer caldera, looking at the inner cone (the mountain in the distance), the lava plain, and the nearby fumarole ("Formica Leo"):



Here's a closeup of Formica Leo. Looking closely, you can see people:



Similarly, if I zoomed in all the way with my camera, I could see a few hikers on the caldera floor:



This is a good place to mention that this hike is pretty grueling. It's long. It's steep. There's exactly zero shade. The weather can change literally in an instant between steaming hot and sunny and cold and rainy, just from a change in the wind.

kaszeta

From Formica Leo, here's another group of hikers heading out to the inner caldera along the trail:



While the ground looks easy, it's actually really rough:



Here's Carol on one of the smoother sections:



And that weather that I said changed quickly? The outer caldera opens to the ocean to the east in a formation called the Grande Brule ("big broil"), where the lava flows into the ocean when the volcano erupts.

It also means that a subtle change in the wind can change the weather in the caldera from "sunny, hot, and still air", to "windy, wet, and overcast", and back, in mere minutes:

kaszeta

Here's the spot I was sitting at for the last two photos. It's part of the lava field from the 2007 eruptions.



It's also not there any more. This is almost the exact spot of the May 19th eruptions that happened 3 weeks after I took this photo. Here's another photographer's view of that exact same spot:



And here's the lava actually erupting (again, not mine). Unlike most eruptions, the May 2015 ones erupted through the side of the inner caldera, right at that spot:

kaszeta

Arriving at the top of the Piton de la Fournaise, you get this ominous warning sign not to cross over the white line.

Noting that at places, the warning line disappears because the rocks it was painted on had tumbled down into the crater already. (I just realized that this is an extremely rare example I saw of an English-language sign, too):



The central caldera of Piton de la Fournaise, and impressive ~300m deep giant hole that was so wide I had trouble even with the wide angle lens.

This is the caldera resulting from the 2007 eruption series... when the eruptions stopped, the magma chamber collapsed and this crater opened up. Back then it was even deeper, but the bottom has been surging up ever since.

Also, you can see the remnants of the previous, smaller caldera up at the top left.

Hard to see, but there's also a smoking vent at the bottom in the rock field:



Here's a closeup of the earlier caldera (half of it is still there):



Here's the view south from the top:



And a fairly rare picture of me (taken with my cellphone by Carol):

kaszeta

Heading down, here I was back at nominally the May eruption spot, where I stopped to take another picture, this time a pano. This slope, the grande brule ("Great broil") extends down to the sea:



Then, time for another trudge back across the caldera, now a lot hotter due to the afternoon sun:



An hour later, I was back looking at the inner caldera, but without clouds this time:



Another 300m climb back to the rim, and you can see how much difference the different weather and lighting made:

kaszeta

After our hiking on the Piton de la Fournaise, we drove to the Northern coast to the small town of Ste-Rose, and stayed at Matilona.

Matilona was a very funky place to stay: it's a converted grocery store, that's been turned into a series of sprawling guest rooms, living rooms, kitchens, and the like, run by a very relaxed inkeeper. And a phenomenal swimming pool.

But the real attraction of Matilona is dinner. Several times a week (not every night), the owner and his chef go to the local markets and whip up one of the most impressive meals on the island. Here's the communal table:



The meal started with an impressive plate of samousas and breadfruit fritters:



I forget the French name for this fish, but some back and forth with the owner indicated that this was a plate of immaculately prepared sashimi-sliced mahi mahi, obtained hours before at the local dock:



An incredibly fragrant ginger- and turmeric-based fish carri:



Far and away the most delicious carri of our visit, this goat and potato carri was a splending combination of good, meaty goat and one of the best carri sauces I've ever had:



And being a good host, there was also... rhum arrange. This one with vanilla, citrus, and orchid leaves:

kaszeta

Next up was a trip down the coast. Our first stop being the village of Piton-Ste-Rose, which had one of the ever-present reminders that there's an active volcano on the island. In 1977, Piton de la Fournaise erupted, and one of the large lava flows approached the village of Piton-Ste-Rose.

Much of the town was damaged or destroyed by the lava, but the lava flow came right up to the front of Eglise-Piton-Ste-Rose, and literally started to go around the building and in the front door. And then stopped.

They pronounced it a miracle, and the church is now call Notre-Dame-Des-Laves ("Our Lady of the Lavas"):

kaszeta

Further down the coast, we explored the "Grande Brule", the fairly barren area to the east of Piton de la Fournaise where the occasional lava flow pours into the ocean.

As a result, the area isn't very populated:







But where the 2007 eruption flows run into the ocean, the result was a rather neat beach, with green sand:

kaszeta

I may have mentioned previously that the people of Reunion love their "piqniques" and driving around, so on weekends, particularly on Sunday mornings, the tradition is to drive around, get some food, and take it to your picnic spot.

One of the preferred foods for picnicking is grilled chicken, which even has a unique name for the island "poulet bitume" (literally, "asphalt chicken" or "roadway chicken")

As a result, on a weekend, there are an almost uncountable number of places selling fresh-grilled chicken at the side of the road. Most existing restaurants do this, and many other roadside stands, houses, shacks, and the like all set up doing chicken. It's quite the sight.

We came across the beautifully-situated La Mer Casée right around lunch time, and decided to check it out for our grilled chicken:



Here's one of their grills, grilling away:



The wonderful thing about La Mer Casée, however, is that their dining area is on a cliff over one of the beaches:



We ordered their lunch special, which was grilled chicken served up in an onion sauce (with the obligatory beans and rice, and a nice lemon-based rougail).

This was absolutely delicious:



Les Reunionnaises generally seem to enjoy dogs, but have a laissez-faire attitude with them, so it wasn't uncommon for neighborhood dogs, strays, and semi-strays to come along looking for handouts.

This guy was apparently well known to the restaurant folks, one of whom called him Carlos:

kaszeta

One of our stops was a particularly pleasant little park called Anse des Cascades, a three-sided bay with vine-covered cliffs.

Not too many of the "cascades" that day, however, since it had been pretty dry:



If my compass was right (as a side note, Northern-hemisphere compasses don't work very well in the Southern Hemisphere, they jam), I should be looking in the direction of Mauritius, but it's too far away to see:



And a rare pic of me and Carol. I realize from these photos I've been going to too many good food, wine, and beer destinations, gotta work on that gut a bit:



Somehow, I got to my second-to-last day on the island without ever taking a picture of the ever-present "La Dodo lé La" signs all over the island.

If you dropped me on another French-speaking island in the Indian Ocean, I'd immediately know it wasn't Réunion due to the absence of these signs *everywhere*. (And you can see the building is even painted in the same scheme):

kaszeta

Ste Rose itself was quite but nice, with a nice park:



And a nice marina (where our host had bought his fish for the previous day's dinner):



Then it was a nice drive up to Col de Bellevue, with one of the nicer views on the eastern part of the island (note the very windy road):



And one of the better views we had of Piton des Neiges, which was usually hiding behind the clouds: