9th March 2008, Port Reunion, Reunion
Only a day from Mauritius but a world apart. Fewer Indians, more Africans and Europeans, but more particularly, a much more mountainous and sophisticated island. But after all, this is France as no one tired of telling us.
Our port of arrival was disappointing; Port de Reunion is just that, a commercial port with little to recommend it, particularly on a Sunday. Having said that, being in the middle of nowhere and with no facilities to speak of the day of our arrival made little difference. It's as well we had a tour.
The island had peaks rising to over 3,000 m as well as an active volcano and three huge craters (caldera) which the French described as cirques - they're not - which were no less spectacular for being misnamed. Our tour took us to the crater edge of one of these caldera at 2,200 m. It took us about an hour and forty minutes to get to the top and we watched the scenery change significantly as we climbed higher. Unfortunately as we reached the top the whole area clouded over and we got a view for about 30 seconds through a brief clearing down to the bottom of the extinct caldera. This was populated by a handful of small hamlets with no road access, one of which we saw for seconds. Apparently, they are serviced on a daily basis by helicopter. That seems rather expensive to us. We had enough time to walk around the crater which was, itself, clear of the cloud. No pics were possible here.
We then descended to a geranium farm which we thought would be the usual commercial rip. However, it proved more interesting that we envisaged, being a supplier to Parisienne parfumiers. The plants used are pink geraniums, also called lemon geraniums and the parts used to produce the geranium oil constitute everything except the flower, the leaves stems etc. These are all placed in a still with a small amount of water at the bottom. This is heated by a wooden fire to produce steam which then takes all the essences out of the geranium shrubs. I guess its like producing espresso coffee. The resulting steamy material is then distilled in a second stainless steel chamber and fed into a large bottle from the bottom. This is then calibrated to allow the water to run off, as the oil rises to the top of the bottle to be tapped off. All very clever. We avoided buying any perfume, but did buy coffee and a number of other items including a vanilla pod holder.
Finally, we went to a rather smart beach resort called St Gilles. All photos were taken here.
Unfortunately we only had about half an hour here. It was very smart with a nice harbour and an aquarium plus a nice beach. But there was insufficient time for a swim. We then returned by the coach to MSVG and took off for Durban.
