March 3, 2023
Good Morning, Overnight we cruised from Mauritius to Reunion Island.
Reunion Island is part of France. So going from driving left in Mauritius to driving on the right side in Reunion. Reunion has a population of 900,000. It has a live volcano standing 2632 meter tall. and there is also a massive extinct volcano. The beaches are a mix of nice white sand from the coral reefs and the black volcanic sand beaches in other places.The road network and infrastructure make you think you’re in Europe. The houses looked all very modern.
This morning we boarded a tour bus on our way to a town called Saint-Gilles. It was about a 40 min drive up the west coast from the harbour. We were scheduled to visit an aquarium. I was a little disappointed by the size of the aquarium, about a quarter in size compared to the aquarium we visited in Scottsdale a few times.We were supposed to spend one hour here and the next hour we were supposed to meet in town under the big tree. All of this was a little confusing . After half an hour in the aquarium we set off on foot to town to our meeting place. On the way there we spotted a few nice beaches. Apparently some of the beaches were closed because of shark attacks. The only beach we noticed had a shark net installed to allow for some swimming. Despite the beach closures we still noticed some surfers out on the open ocean.There have been 27 fatal shark attacks since 2018. (scary) For that, we skipped swimming today. We found our way to the main street in town, stopped for a coffee and checked out the bakery on the street corner. It was definitely a challenge to order anything in the stores, as English isn’t spoken here. We eventually ended up at the Big Tree to meet the bus. I thought for sure we would lose some of the older passengers, but they all showed up.
On our way back to the pier we stopped at an old seaside cemetery outside the town of Saint-Paul. The Cemetery certainly could use a good Landscaper to cut the grass and pull some weeds. When we arrived back at the pier we all had to get off the bus and go through the passport control and back on the bus. They pulled me to the side to pad me down, not sure what they were looking for. Could it be Cheese? After we got back on the boat I had a quick nap before the 5:30 sail away gathering on the back deck.In the middle of enjoying our Pina Colada sail away cocktail for the day, the captain came on the intercom. The news was that we were going to skip the next port of Madagascar because it was not safe to land there . Apparently Cyclone Freddy decided to reappear again and was in the path of our voyage . The captain decided to alter his route further south to miss the cyclone on route to our next stop of Maputo Mozambique. The end result is that instead of 2 sea days we now have 4 sea days ahead of us.
“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”
By – Gustauve Flaubert.
Cheers
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