12 january

It's been a while but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to put pictures on today. shame cos I have some good ones, except not for today as my camera ran out of batteries on me at the beginning of the day. Each time I turn on the computer I tend to read about Brisbane. People here keep asking me if my house is ok.

Firstly I am a bit stiff in some parts and leaner too, probably due to a little bit of hiking combined with the heat. I did 2 hikes lately, not very long, one of 7ks or so (Piton Fougeres- Fern Hill) and one of 17 kms (Nez Casse of Riviere de l'Est- Broken nose of the eastern river- don't ask).

The first one was with mum and dad and the ground had a certain squishy and slurpy quality to it, the kind that sells for good money in fancy spa under names such as "regenerative and purifying mud mask". By the end of it I think I had about, oh, let's say a good $30's worth of it on my legs. Dad would not let us back in the car with our shoes.
The scenery was exquisite, a primary forest. we were walking under a canopy of ferns and fallen trees covered in moss. We walked to a superb view point (usually the aim when walking here), with the whole "circus" of Salazie laying at our feet.... and had an excellent lunch of foie gras sandwiches. Dad cut me a bamboo stick which turned out to  save my ass from getting a mud treatment too.  We did not see many animals so on the way down I amused  myself with the  disgusting thought that, if stuck there, Bear Grills would have had to eat toads. Raw (too humid for fire). I take that back he could probably find "zandets" (witchity grubs).

The second hike was a more social affair, with family and friends of the family. We hiked down a  shady path to reach a plateau and, at the end, another excellent view and then we retreated to a dry river bed with shade for a lunch of, wait for it, rice and chicken curry and roast pork curry, and that was after the foie gras toasts and punch . Now, THAT is the traditional lunch when hiking here. Anybody who is going to walk in reasonable heat,  for a certain number of hours tries to downsize their backpack by bringing energy food. But not creol people. No. why make it simple when you can have it complex and harder? Not whinging mind, the food was delicious and I did not carry most of it; though I had more than my fair share of bottles of water to carry. And my parents did not choose to bring their curry in a plastic light box either. It's coming in full on saucepans if you please, with the gas heater to heat it up. And heat up the coffee too after....

We felt a bit guilty, eating so much, although I seem to remember dad and his friend not being so happy about us not eating more (they were carrying leftovers back up you see). I knew it was going to make me slower,  to my shame, maybe even slower than the cows. Because you see, as you come down a path that is sometimes so tricky with slanted river beds you have to steady yourself holding on to branches, you cannot help noticing the cow dung further down the path and then it dawns on you. The cows take the path regularly. Surely if a cow can do it, you can too? And faster? and that's not mentioning mountain bike riders, whom we met at the botttom.

We did make it back up, some of us a bit slower, but none faster than the mountain bike riders. Luckily the sun was not out. When we left in the morning the sky was blue and the vistas clear and pure. Coming up in the afternoon, the fog had moved onto the plateau and at the top of our hike. We could see it moving in the plains around the volcano reaching further and further and further like an impredictable cotton blanket. It is normally forbidden to wander off the path on the plains around the volcano. The fog can come up so quickly you can get lost and with 5 to 6 degrees overnight in full summer and cliffs a little bit everywhere, you can only imagine what kind of a night you'll be having.

It is quite a sight reaching the plains around the volcano, called "sand plain". You are coming up a road where vegetation resembles a bit what you have in the countryside of the Yarra Valley around Melbourne, a bit Jane Austenian I like to think. Then suddenly it's fresher and it's not so many trees but more scrubs of a sort. You come up a winding little hill, barely there and, right at the top, as the car turns on the other side of the hill, you cross over to be faced, to your great amazement, by... the moon. It should have been named "moon plain". No trees, no scrubs but brown  earth with reddish tones as far as the eye can see, with some hills, and, in the distance, the Volcano, majestic, grand, calling you....... And a crappy crappy dirt road. Make sure your car can take it.

It was a long day, with a 5.30 wake up call and traffic jam on the way back. We didn't make it back before 7.15pm. Also we had to stop to buy a "palmist", like a fresh palm heart thingy. And I do stand corrected on one point, there ARE lots of palm trees in "Palm tree plain", that I alluded to a while ago. It's just that it's not really palm tree, but more a palm heart tree, a different kind of tree with some of the trunk that can be eaten.

Today has been a bit of fish spotting and history. We had a pic-nic planned today but our friends cancelled so we went to the beach in Saint-Pierre, stood around in traffic for an hour and turned around to go to the beach in Saint-Leu instead. A beach I recommend: it has a good public toilet, an extreme rarity around here.  And fishes in the lagoon, and if you like to surf a good left as well.
The beauty was that after flopping around in the water  with me chasing fish, we  just had to hop out and here we were , in a restaurant for lunch, righ there on the beach; not a sandwicherie, a proper restaurant with a view on the beach. Nice.
Our stomachs full of ducks breast in pineapple and four spice sauce, salad of smoked fish and sorbets, we headed to the Musee de Villele, where, to my great shame, I had never been before. I'm not sure I would count it as a must see, it's not very well managed and we had the most monotonous guide we had ever seen. We think he was a) tired,  or b) drunk, or  c) sick, possibly d) all of the above.

The site is the estate of the Deybassins family, the richest people in Reunion in the 18-19th century. And in Reunion that means they also had the most slaves. They had around 400 I think.  I guess it is difficult to make a site of this nature more animated and interactive. It is a side of history that does not lend itself easily to screens and costumed characters like in Sovereign Hill. But they do need to look after the grounds a bit better and make it easier to access.
They had beautiful trees. I sat underneath a perfumed Ylang-Ylang, mum spent some time sneaking Tamarind in her handbag and I spent the whole afternoon with my nose in Frangipani flowers just picked from the floor ( a fragrant and beautiful flower- if you're not sure you are in the tropics, pick it off the floor, look at it and smell it, you'll know). The mot amazing member of the family is "Madame Deybassins". She has been demonised a lot in literature, in children stories. She was a mean old lady (she lived until 91 years old and took care of the estate for 46 years after the death of her husband!) or so the stories say. The written history says otherwise, but it is the story written by family and white slave owners. So no one really knows for sure what kind of a woman Madame was.

On this non-conclusive thought, I am off to bed.