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Starblazer - 02/11/2015 – Exploring La Reunion



Wednesday also threatened rain but, undeterred, we set off to visit the
Cirque de Salazie, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Originally the
island was created by the eruption of Piton des Neiges, now dormant for
about 30,000 years. Three large craters collapsed, rivers cut twisting
gorges through the rock and the cirques are the remnants of the craters.
Two have roads twisting and climbing to the villages established in them,
the third, Mafate, has only footpaths leading in. This latter one is a mecca
for walkers with accommodation available, needless to say we didn’t visit
it!

Not unusually, we were in the outside lane when the very poorly sign posted
exit sped by but, according to the map, the next turning was an alternative
approach. It was until they closed the river bridge for rebuilding! We
did, however, find a road leading up to a view of the Cascade du Chien,
quite a big waterfall, and further to a viewpoint. By this time the rain had
started falling quite heavily so there was no point in walking to the
viewpoint as the visibility was poor. ‘Road ’is perhaps a misleading
description; yes it had a concrete surface most of the way up, but it was a
single carriageway shared with sugar cane lorries and buses! It was also
almost continuous hairpin bends.

Once we descended to the main road we went back to find the Salazie road.
As expected it was very twisty, with many very high waterfalls. Salazie
itself was a bottle neck but Hell Bourg was quite a pretty village. There
was no point walking to a viewpoint because the rain, though intermittent,
had seriously affected the visibility. We returned to Le Port via the road
between the two volcanos, Pitron des Neiges and the active Piton de la
Fournaise.

Thursday morning we set off to visit the Cirque de Cilaos with, allegedly,
the twistiest road of all even though it is classified N5 and coloured red
on the map unlike the minor road to Salazie or the track to Cascade du
Chien! The road was a fantastic feat of engineering, including tunnels,
single track sections and one 270 degree turn, rising so you pass over the
road you approached the turn on. The sunshine made a big difference to our
enjoyment of the cirque. The village of Cilaos was very pleasant, with some
interesting shops. The speciality of the village is a form of embroidery
known as ‘jours de Cilaos’, it is very intricate and I’m not sure my eyes
are up to it but I bought a book anyway. The tourist office recommended a
viewpoint 10 minutes drive away, it didn’t disappoint. Below us on separate
plateaux you could see the several small hamlets, all around the peaks of
the mountains rose up above us. It was stunning.

Back at Le Port we went to a Halloween Party at the café/bar, the food was
very good and the variety of costumes amazing. The downside was that
Immigration were expected at 6.30 the next morning! We were up in time,
they were late, so we set about taking the genoa down and pulling the jib up
instead as we are expecting some head winds. The genoa refused to drop, the
swivel was jamming on the forestay, a problem last experienced when we
picked up our last boat in Corfu in 1993! That furler had screws holding
the sections of foil together and they did have a habit of coming loose.
The Seldon one has rollpins and one had slipped out slightly. Now we know
where the two I’d found on the deck at different times came from! We got
the sail down by transferring the halyard to the head of the sail instead of
the swivel then John went back up the mast to knock the pin back in when
there was no load on the forestay. Mission accomplished, the jib was then
raised and rolled away.

The rest of Friday was spent doing boat jobs and returning the hire car
before the Skippers’ Briefing. Earlier on Friday we had received an e-mail
from Rally Control in Cowes stating that the leg to South Africa would be
non-competitive, suggesting that the slower boats should leave as early as
possible but that the faster boats might benefit from delaying their
departure in an effort to avoid the worst of the headwinds expected south of
Madagascar. We left the dockside at 0900, an hour earlier than originally
planned.

La Reunion is a lovely island which we have thoroughly enjoyed, not just
because it is France with baguettes, good cheese etc. Sadly the weather
wasn’t all we might have wished but that is in the lap of the Gods.

Joyce



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