Our tour today is with Heloise of Experience Reunion.  We are going to Cirque de Salazie, one of the craters left when the volcano collapsed ages ago.  We were lucky to be able to re-book the tour for today.  Originally, we were with 6 others and we assumed they were from the Quest, but it turns out they are all from the Sun Princess who is still scheduled to dock here tomorrow.  The price for just the 2 of us will double essentially, as Heloise’s minimum price is for 2 up to 4 people.  We thought about trying to find someone to join us, but really?  We prefer to be by ourselves, so we’re good with the price.

We arrive pretty much on time and after a scrum for the port entrance shuttle (We swear, we never want to hear about ugly Americans! We’re being run over and shoved and cut in line by every nationality there is – not Americans.  Sigh.), we make it relatively unscathed at the port exit.  We are required to bring our passports (how many people forget do you think?) because we have to go through passport control.  After trying to understand the passport officer’s questions (I think he says what cities have you visited, Ed thinks he asks where we are from) he stamps our passports and we are finally released and are the 2nd and 3^rd persons out of the port.  As we walk to the exit, a port rep offers us masks and a sheet on the coronavirus.  Hmmmm.  I take the masks, what the heck – allegedly no one can find them any more, so 2 more won’t hurt us.  Then there are 2 women filming us as we leave, one on an iPhone, one with a traditional media/TV camera.  I wave – hey, I’m a friendly tourist – and the iPhone lady asks if I speak French, no sorry, and that’s the end of that!

Heloise is waiting for us as soon as we exit, greeting us warmly and ushering us up through the entrance lot and out toward the parking lot on the outside of the port.  As we are walking up a narrow little sidewalk lined with tall fencing to the little walking gate, a bunch of burly guys stand there and block our way.  One guy in particular takes a hold of the poles securing the gate and blocks our path, arguing with Heloise in French about letting us onto the island.  He asks if we have had health checks, which we say no – but we should have said yes, obviously, duh!  And he proceeds to tell us we can’t leave the port, because they don’t want the coronavirus.  While we deal with this guy, Heloise arguing away, and us trying to tell him we don’t have it and are not sick, a bunch of the other guys are blocking the cars and vans coming out of the port.  Yikes.  Heloise tries to find the police, which of course, are nowhere to be found, and we continue to argue with the guy, telling him we had a health check when we got on the ship, no one is sick, etc. etc.  He’s not budging.  He’s also just some local guy protesting.  When we ask him if he is a port official, he say “No!” and beats his chest, proudly exclaiming “Populacion!”  Well, now he’s really making us angry!  Finally a bunch of other passengers, seeing our dilemma, walk out the car gate.  There are so many of them, that the guys can’t stop them all.  Heloise and I take this moment to slip under our guy’s arms and out into the lot, but he’s still got Ed blocked. I start trying to pry his fingers off the pole while he says “Madam! Madam!” But I’m not letting up, because this is getting too tense and he’s not stopping just us if everyone else is walking around the blockade.  Finally he relents and we are free.  Wow, that was close to fisticuffs there for a moment.  We can certainly understand everyone’s fears, but this is not the right way to go about expressing concerns – particularly when our ship hasn’t been anywhere near any outbreaks and the cruise line screened all the passengers and would not let them board if they had been to any of the suspected outbreak areas within 15 days prior to boarding. 

Phew, we’re filled with adrenaline now!  As we finally leave the port, we rehash the events over again and talk about the virus, plus Heloise talks about the Sun Princess coming in tomorrow and all the rumors – like the ship didn’t stay in quarantine enough, it left early and now it is coming here.  We are able to debunk this one – it’s not the same ship – they are talking about the Diamond Princess, and this is the Sun Princess.  While that is true, this ship has been to Thailand and Singapore, so we can’t make any statements there, but we do tell Heloise about the confusion on the name, and where the ship has been.  At least she will have that in her armaments tomorrow for her Sun Princess cruise passengers.

The altercation has delayed us enough that we miss the first tour at the Vanilla Plantation, so instead we dive off the highway and drive through the sugar cane to a lovely little Hindu Temple located right outside the entrance to one of the sugar cane processing plants.  As we drive, Heloise gives us some history on the island, how sugar cane is a very important crop still for the island, as opposed to Mauritius, which still has a lot of sugar cane, but does not base a large percentage of its economy on sugar cane harvesting any longer.

Since we still have time, we strike off through more sugar cane fields, driving down little lanes lined with 10 foot high canes (looking more like a maze than an actual road) to Niagara falls – yes, Reunion’s only little Niagara falls – at the dead end of the road through the cane.  There’s a lovely little park and a pebbly beach leading down to some really nice falls.  The water is quite nice, and while Heloise says we can swim here, we’re not quite equipped for that.  We’re happy to walk along the water and enjoy the cool breeze coming off the waterfalls pouring over the face of the rocky cliffs. Heloise plays photographer and we get some great shots of the two of us that aren’t selfies (thank heavens!), then its time to head back to the Vanilla Plantation.

On the way we stop to mail a birthday card in the little town of Saint Marie, then make it to the plantation only a few minutes late for the hourly tour.  As it turns out, we are the only ones there for the tour, so we get our own private tour through the plantation, beginning with a 10 minute movie which is an excellent introduction into vanilla growing.  We had absolutely no idea how labor intensive it is – no wonder it is so expensive!  The vanilla originally grown here was introduced from Mexico, I think in the 1800s.  It wasn’t self-pollinating and a black man (might have been a slave) figured out how to pollinate the flowers by hand – and that is how they have been doing it every since.  The plantation here grows some of their own vanilla and is testing different types, which are explained to us when we visit the green house type area (open air but with a mesh tarp above the plants to minimize the sunlight. 

Once the vanilla beans ripen, they are hand picked and then dipped into boiling water in a huge basket to get the beans warm and soft, then placed inside blankets in a huge wooden crate. I can’t remember how long they are in the crate, drying, but once they come out they are hand checked for irregularities and rubbed to get flavor to all the beans.  All by hand!  They are then placed on air drying racks and flipped every so often to make sure they are drying and turning brown evenly.  After the drying process is finished, they are measured and sorted by size, then put together in bundles and aged in crates for a year or more.  Fascinating and incredible. We have a lot more respect for Vanilla now!

After our tour we buy some vanilla ice cream which is like nothing we’ve ever tasted – so good and well, vanilla-y!  We tell Paul how good it is, and also explain how we use the word vanilla to mean plain.  He’s shocked, as is Heloise when we tell her. Neither of them had ever heard that expression.  Guess it is because their vanilla is really good, and ours is, well, not so much!  We demur on any purchases, only because we are tight on space and while all the sachets and powders and syrups look great, honestly?  We won’t use any of it once we are home.  Not even the vanilla beans and they are too expensive to buy and then let sit on a shelf somewhere.  So, we’re off – onto our main adventure, Cirque de Salazie.

Heloise has a super cool topographical map in her car that she refers to constantly as we drive around the island. It is great to really give you a feel of where you are going and what you can see.  We are heading into one of the main craters where there are waterfalls and a towns and where you can drive.  Another crater, Mafate, has no roads at all. Everyone who lives there – and there are a lot of people who do – must hike in and out. Some communities will band together to rent a helicopter to bring in supplies, but as you can imagine, that is prohibitively expensive so most just haul supplies in on foot.  Talk about remote living!

As we drive, we find out more about Heloise, and her background. Born and raised in France, she ended up in Australia, on Bondi Beach for work.  From there she visited Reunion on vacation and fell in love. She is definitely an outdoor enthusiast, and at some point when she had to renew her visa for Australia, if I’m remembering this correctly, she moved to the island, but couldn’t make ends meet in her career (social work, maybe?).  She went back to France, but knew it wasn’t right for her.  She longed to be back on the island.  She got to thinking and decided to start a tour company, did all the research and the set up from France, then moved back to the island to make a go of it.  She’s been doing this for 4 years, I think, and as far as we’re concerned, it was absolutely the right move for her!  She is an excellent guide, so well versed and versatile!  She can tour you around or take you hiking or just about anything adventurous you can conjure up.  

We enter the Salazie crater through a sort of arm, where the canyon walls rise up on either side of us creating funnel like feeling moving into the mountains.  As we go higher and higher, the already green island becomes much more green and lush with towering trees and flowering shrubs everywhere.  The road winds and curves, delivering us into the beginning of the crater as we drive through Pisse en l’air, a waterfall that seems to come from nowhere and “waters” the road, shall we say!  Immediately after our natural car wash, we stop on the side of the road for a fantastic tall waterfall flowing down into the river that carves out the bottom of the crater. 

It’s one gorgeous scene after the other as we explore the crater.  We stop for the world famous Voile de la Mariee, or Bride’s Veil waterfall, a series of waterfalls cascading down all over the side of the caldera.  Then continue our windy steep drive up to Hell-Bourg a tiny little village perched at the apex of the Cirque de Salazie.  From here the vistas are amazing, looking out over the Piton d’Anchaing, one of the highest peaks in the calderas.  Everything is lovely and green and peaceful and quiet. 

The little town of Hell-Bourg with its colonial/creole style houses lining the road is our lunch stop.  We park just outside of the main strip and walk back up to center of town to choose a café to grab a “snack” lunch.  Heloise points out one café with tables in a brick courtyard, but it is relatively full with people and we had seen a sign for a garden café so we backtrack there and order, only to realize there are tons of orders ahead of us (including from some of our cruise mates who are on their own private tour).  Oh well, the garden is truly a gorgeous setting and they’ve got beer while we wait – so what do we care? 

Grabbing a table, we hang out under the umbrella (that sun is HOT when it comes out – so hot in fact that I burned my arm on the zipper pull of our backpack after it sat in the sun), sipping cold Bourbon beers (Bourbon so named because Reunion was called “Bourbon Island” originally) waiting for our “snacks” to arrive.  They finally did, and oh geez, they are the biggest sandwiches you’ve ever seen! On a monstrous French baguette, I had chicken with melted cheese and Ed had sausage, which actually turned out to be more like Prosciutto with melted cheese.  Oh my God.  So good, but so huge!  I’m totally stuffed and can’t believe I managed to finish as much as I did. 

Back to the car we drive a little way into the interior of the town to visit one of the prettiest cemeteries we have ever seen. Perched at the end of town, overlooking the mountains, the cemetery is decorated with not just plastic flowers or vases, there are actual living plants and flowers growing everywhere.  The town council plants flowering bushes along the walkways, but relatives plant flowers on the graves of their loved ones.  Stunning.

Now we are headed back into town and out of the Cirque, but we have one more “surprise” stop.  Heloise takes us past this little snack shop she had pointed out earlier and into the forest, winding around and finally stopping at a pullout near a rushing river.  We can hear the river, but not see it due to the infestation of the chayote plant.  This vine (similar to Kudzo) has overtaken everything and is everywhere you look. While a major problem to the vegetation, at least it does supply some value in the form of the chayote vegetable itself.  Islanders cook it in every sort of way, put it into a myriad of dishes and use the leaves for herbs and drinks as well.  If only kudzu had a redeeming quality like that!

At any rate, we climb a rugged path next to the river, the white water rapids almost deafening, until we turn a corner and the river recedes, the sound goes away and we are standing before a perfectly peaceful and verdantly green lake surrounded by forest.  What a lovely surprise!  Heloise has lugged her cooler up to the lake with us, and after we wander along the shores for a bit, taking in the beauty and serenity, we return to her and hang out, refreshing ourselves with some juice mix she has brought, and chatting amiably.

The lake is known as Mare a Poule d’Eau, which is “Water Chicken Lake”.  There used to be a huge number of water chickens here, a sort of cross between duck and chicken, but they have disappeared as I believe they’ve been hunted almost to extinction. But as we are sitting there, we actually see a couple of these little black chicken like creatures running around on the lily pads at the edge of the pond.  Sweet.

Packing up,  we trek back down to the car, stopping to take a picture of the explanation of the lake that I was hoping to translate through Google Translate (but, PS, that didn’t work) then hop in the car for our return journey.

On the way back we stop in the town of Salazie to see the church – their “little Notre Dame.” From the outside it does resemble a small Notre Dame, very formidable and stoic with dark glass windows.  And on the inside it is also pretty plain and simple except for the stained glass windows.  These things are absolutely stunning – and you’d never know it from the outside where they appear to be just grey windows with some decorative metal.  Inside they shine in the most gorgeous colors, adding so much color and feeling to the church. 

A lovely day in the crater and mountains!  We have one last stop in Saint Denis, the main town on the island, to wander a bit and get a feel for the creole style of building.  But we take this time to find an ATM instead, because we need more Euros in order to pay Heloise.  It is still nice to walk through the pedestrian streets people watching.  Since it is Saturday afternoon, the city is alive with people and we have fund winding our way through families, couples, friends, teens, all enjoying the afternoon out.

Banking accomplished, we spend a few moments in a market full of stuff we don’t need and don’t want to haul home, then back to Heloise to take us back to the port.  The protesters have been replaced with police (3 police cars to be exact), which makes us feel a little better (of course it would have been nice to have them there in the morning, but now is good too) as we say goodbye to Heloise and thank her for a lovely day. 

Through Passport control without a problem, this officer is much nicer and friendlier asking us if we went to the volcano and when we say no, telling us we much then come back to see it, we hop the shuttle and are back on the ship in a jiffy, ready for Mauritius tomorrow.