Not as dead as a Dodo!

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Going through the pics from my now defunct phone camera I found these from the island of La Reunion.

Reunion Island is off the south east coast of Madagascar. Although it is in the Indian Ocean, it is a department of France and so is actually in Europe!

It is the first land that the ancient mariners came to after crossing the Indian Ocean from India and the far east, laden with silks, tea and spices.

Famously, it is the home of Bourbon vanilla and, infamously, it was home to the now extinct Dodo bird.

The poor old Dodo didn’t stand a chance – fat, flightless, virtually asleep on its feet…and right there in the path of hungry sailors…

For several centuries, the French colonists grew sugar and cotton with the help of, mostly, African slaves. Many Malabars (Indian subcontinent) and Chinese traders came to the island over the years. The population now is a happy blend of all these peoples, who are now French!
(The food is also a fusion of all these culinary traditions and is amazing!)

Around one hundred years ago, the authorities decided to build a road across the middle of the island. This is the journey we made on that road.

First, we travelled north along the west coast. Here and there, you suddenly see a great spout of water, out beyond the reef, then nearby a humpback whale breaches vertically out of the water and crashes back down again, sending a huge wall of water upwards into the sky…

Oops! Missed it! The white dots are whale watching boats.

Darn! Missed it again! Never did manage to get camera organised in time!

After a while, we turned east into the interior. The road follows the path of a river, up and up…

When the roadbuilders reached the summit, imagine their surprise when they found…

…Hellbourg!

Over the centuries, all the runaway slaves had made their way up the river…

…and founded a little Creole town (completely unbeknown to their masters!)…

…it even had a little Chinese general store!!!

After Hellbourg, the mountains give onto a huge high plain which straddles the island…

…and reminds you, a little, of the land that time forgot…

…a forest of tree ferns…

Then…rising in the distance…on the southeast coast…

The volcano…

…with several craters…

…and one really huge one!…

…and in that, there are lots of ‘pimples’…any one of which can suddenly send out a firey plume of lava! There is a wonderful picture of a tourist taking a picture of one of these pimples, when it suddenly spits molton rock at him!!…but I can’t show it to you as it’s not mine!…

The landscape is breathtaking…and the volcano is still very active…its last big eruption was in 2008!

Needless to say, noone lives around there and when it erupts, the lava rolls down the volcano and straight into the sea…making it boil…

But…by now it was getting towards sundown…

We had been out all day and had a wonderful experience…

…there was just one thing left to do…

Planter’s Punch!

A perfect end to a perfect day…cheers!!!

• 13 Jul, 2011
• 11 likes

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