At 5:30a I woke to find an email from today’s tour guide suggesting we cancel the trip as the forecast was so lousy. She had written it the night before but our internet is so spotty I never received it. As she had to leave her house at 6a to reach us by 8a because of heavy traffic I said let’s just do it and if we can’t see the volcano we’ll just drive somewhere else.

I found Carole and her tour company through a TripAdvisor referral and arranged a van tour for 7 people. Karen posted it on our Facebook group and I quickly filled all the seats.

So Reunion – it’s a department of France floating out here in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The inhabitants are French citizens, pay French taxes, use the euro, have every European shopping convenience, have boulangeries and patisseries. It’s a little disconcerting, seeing the mega-Carrefours and Decathlons in such a tropical environment.

Our tour was to the Volcano de Fournaise which involved an hour’s drive south on the highway, then almost another hour up (and up and up) to the National Park at the top. Unlike past excursions I didn’t take a single photo on the way, just nothing photo-worthy….

Nearing the top we drove into the cloud layer and Carole was a bit concerned that everything would be obscured but we were lucky and the mist lifted just at the right times that we saw almost everything!

We climbed higher up the mountain to a lookout over the lunar landscape of an old volcano crater and then descended down and across it to access the viewpoint of the most recently active volcano, La Fournaise.

At 2364m we were back in the clouds with the wind blowing in constant streams of wispy mist that teased a glimpse of the peak but never actually cleared. The active side of the volcano is on the far side though there are little volcanoes popping up in the near crater and the darker patches coming down from the peak that you see are lava streams from a 2007 eruption. Fournaise last erupted in September!

It was a chilly 15°C so we didn’t linger overly long but headed back down to the lunar landscape for hot tea and banana bread!

Our last stop of the morning was at the Crater Commerson. Formed 2000 years ago it’s 200m across and 235m deep.

We elected for “lite” sightseeing afterwards, no museums or rum factories so Carole drove us back via the ocean road which, until 2013 was the only road around the island. The highway took a lot of pressure off the traffic situation but it has since grown so exponentially that there’s a 3 hour rush hour both morning and evening. Far too many cars and very inefficient public transportation system.