Hello all,
It's been a while since the last update, and this will be my last email before I leave the island!
I'll cover what I have been up to since December, which includes my trip to Captetown, South Africa, My bicycle trip around La Réunion, and my recent trip to Madagascar over spring break. This one is a bit more... off the cuff, so bear with me. Let's get started!
1. South Africa
The Christmas break on the island was a whopping 5 weeks long, and I took full advantage. On New Year's day I got on a plane bound for Capetown, South Africa. I was lucky enough to have a local guide for my time spent in South Africa: my cousin Nico! Shoutout to an awesome host and wonderful dude.
Our first adventure was to visit the Cederberg Wilderness, a 4 hour drive north of Capetown. It was HOT there, and sunny; there wasn't a cloud in the sky for the entire weekend. We spent our time hiking, swimming multiple times per day, and chilling in the shade. We did most of our cooking after the sunset. And the stars were absolutely incredible from our site!
After that, I spent the remainder of my visit in Capetown and vicinity. Among other adventures, I visited Robben Island, did a hike up Table Mountain, and saw the Penguins at Simon's Town! I also took a day to visit the Cape of Good Hope, the southwestern most point of South Africa. Because it is so exposed, I was met with some of the strongest winds of my entire life!
However my main adventure during this time was learning how to surf! I took 4 surf lessons with a surf school at Muizenberg beach. I made decent progress, and wasn't on the huge board by then end! Me and one of Nico's roommates also surfed on my last day in Capetown.
Overall, a successful and wonderful trip!
2. Bike Tour of La Réunion
Pretty much as soon as I got back from Capetown, I left on by 5-day bike tour of the island. I went with my friend Christiana. She is one of the people that did the October GRR2 hike with me in Mafate!
I won't go over every detail of the trip, but suffice it to say that it was a grand success! This was towards the end of January, full-on summer here. Accordingly, we woke up quite early every day to beat the heat. (not that it mattered, it was brutally hot by 8am each day!!) We typically started our rides as the sun was coming up, and finished them by late morning. Our average day was a cool 50k.
We went around the island counter-clockwise, our first stop was in St. Joseph, then our second day we ended in Ste. Rose. The second day was absolutely stunning, we were following the east coast of the island, which is less developed. We passed through the 'Grand Brûlé', which is where a lava flow hit in 2007. The entire day was filled with awesome views of the deep blue sea.
The third day's highlight was a 16-minute downhill near Ste. Anne. It was incredible! We went from 300m down to sea-level, and I almost forgot how to pedal once we arrived at the bottom! That night we stayed in St. Denis, then on day 4 we traveled to St. Gilles. That was our last stop before returning to St. Pierre the next day. It was a great trip, and a fantastic way to see the island at a slower pace and soak it in.
3. Bike ride up to Cilaos
In late February, I had one particularly interesting and full Saturday. I woke up at 4h30, and me and my pal Jeremy (Photo 12) biked from St. Pierre, at sea level, all the way up to the mountain town of Cilaos, at around 1200m. Here's the approximate route we took https://goo.gl/maps/R6GZXv9LeWC2
It was a brutal day, we took about 5h to get up the mountain, my legs were jelly when we did reach the top! But it was wonderful to be at elevation to have a break from the hot, hot heat of St. Pierre. We hung out and ate a hardy lunch, then took only 1h30m to get back to St. Pierre! What a crazy difference that makes.
We passed through 3 (one-lane) tunnels on our way to Cilaos, which were pretty dark to do on a bike. We also had cars cheering us on our whole way up, honking at us and waving and yelling wildly! Not many people make this trek... We saw only about 5 other cyclists total on that day.
Some photos from the ride to Cilaos are below:
4. Madagascar Spring Break
Over my March break, I checked a big item off the bucket list, and visited Madagascar! I was there for 12 days, and split my time between Antsirabe, in the center of the country, and Morondava, a small fishing village on the west coast. Coincidentally, Dahveed Benson (My dean at Les Voyageurs) was also taking a class there on a school trip at the same time! So we got to overlap for about 5 days of my trip.
A few photos are already on my Instagram, you can check them out here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BvTa7oTHOtt629EkeoiObAPSIe6Npr7JQj3hbo0/
The highlight of the trip for me was learning as much Malagasy as possible; I had a local guide giving me lessons almost every day! By the end of the trip I could speak broken Malagasy but get my point across well enough to order food, ask for directions, and other basic tasks! My French was always a fallback—one that I used often—but the most satisfying moments were when I was able to communicate with someone who didn't know French. That always brought a smile to their face. This is especially true since many tourists (mainly French nationals) don't make any effort to learn the language.
Another great day in Madagascar was when I got to take a little pirogue out for the morning in a bay near Morondava. The guides let me sit in the back and steer the boat. (Le Gouvernail) They were skeptical at first, but they were floored when I navigated it up a narrow river with no difficulty. We also got a lot of weird looks, it's not common to see a white tourist steering with two locals in front! It was a great day, and it felt really good to paddle again!
I did a couple of tourist-y things while I was there as well: one day I went and saw Allée des Baobabs, a stunning display of some of the indigenous baobab trees. Later that day I went to a nature preserve nearby called Kirindy Forest, where I saw tons of lemurs, parrots, and chameleons! (Photo 20) It was a nice little excursion, but I was excited at the end of it to get back to a less tourist-y space.
Another highlight was the food! All the food was delicious, and cheap as well due to the exchange rate! Some of the favourites were Zebu Brochettes, and Ravitoto (photo 21) Zebu is an animal here that is very closely related to a cow, except with a nice hump on it's back (more on them in the next section!) Ravitoto is a traditional Malagasy dish made up of ground cassava leaves, as a sort of soup broth, usually with a meat in the soup as well. It's served with rice, and—for the ambitious—sakay. Sakay is basically hot sauce, that is eaten all over in Mada, it's delicious and I ate it at every opportunity I had!
Although there was a lot more happening in my Madagascar trip, the one last thing I will mention here is the Taxi-Brusse. Personal cars are exceedingly rare in Madagascar, and are essentially only found in Tana. Otherwise, the way people get around in cities, or in-between cities, is via public transport. Enter the Taxi-Brusse. It's a 12-15 person van that gets filled to the brim for every voyage. There are private options, but this is how the grand majority of Malagasy get around the island. I took one from Morondava to Antsirabe. It's a 480km ride, which took us 13h to complete! The slow travel was due to a number of factors. First, the road quality. It's everyone's first thought, and it's true that there were potholes and poor roads for some portions of the trip, but overall road conditions were good. Second, the crowds. Whenever we passed through small villages, there were hundreds of people in the main road. Fruit stands inching on to the pavement, dogs, cats, and chickens running everywhere, and rice drying on the asphalt, made travel through each villages. There were also police checkpoints at many of these villages, but often they only stopped us for half a minute, looked in the windows, and let us go on our way. Third, the zebu! Between villages, we would often cross herds of zebu, which were taking up the entire road. It took a bit of wrangling to get them off to the side, which slowed us down every group that we passed.
All that said, I loved my travel with the Taxi-Brusse. It was a wonderful way to see the vast countryside, and travel with the locals. And that 480km bus ride? It cost me about $10 USD.
Overall, my Madagascar trip was fantastic! Everyone I talked to in La Réunion was worried that I was traveling there alone. But I was cautious, self-aware, and at the end of the day I never once felt unsafe. I loved speaking with the locals, riding the pousse-pousse, and being in such a beautiful, rich, and strange place. I was sad to leave with how amazing the trip was. I'm definitely going back when I get the chance!
5. That's all folks!
If you have any questions about anything I touched on above, don't hesitate to ask! With so much to cover, I barely scratched the surface on each individual topic, so I likely have more to share if you're curious!
My time at La Réunion is nearing the end. I have one more big adventure planned: this coming weekend I will be heading back into Mafate for a 3-day, 2-night hike. We get Easter Monday off from school, which is why we're able to do this! It will be amazing to be back in one of my favourite places on the island. After that.... my flight back to the states leaves on May 4th!
It's been a wild ride, but I'm also excited to come home and go on my next adventures this summer!
Happy trails to all,
Stephen ‘Jean-Canot’