It is said that, from space, the mountains on Reunion look like a clover leaf. Easy to imagine. In coming days we will be climbing the volcano in the SE, and walking the Cirque de Mafate, the top left of the clover leaves.
It was only a short drive to St Rose, the whole island is something like 70 miles long and 45 miles wide. We drove mostly through sugar cane fields, with the ocean on our left, and the cloud covered mountains on our right.
We had to stop at the church in St Anne, described as the most decorative on Reunion, baroque style, but it almost looked like a Hindu cross to us.
We are staying at Matilona in St Rose, great weather and a lovely pool, which was put to good use in the afternoon.
The area reminded us very much of Costa Rica, lush tropical vegetation and colourful birds.
The cardinal birds, which go from a pale colour to bright red in the breeding season were the most spectacular
The trees were heavily hung with weaver bird nests, many still being built..
..and the palms were throwing out quite lovely different pods
For lunch we walked down to the little man made harbour
There was a very basic local cafe there
Lunch was chicken or some other fowl we couldn't translate, but seeing it was different, I decided it had to be tried.
It was really quite nice, gamely, but nicely spiced up with the little condiment bowl ingredients. We were all somewhat surprised when we later Googled the dish and discovered it was guinea fowl.....that's shown below...another first.
We had an amazing dinner with other guests and our host. Basically, marinated raw fish with extras, mahi mahi to start...
...then tuna, with a dipping sauce and shredded cabbage
This was accompanied by flavoured rum cocktails to start, wines with dinner and rum liqueurs to finish. Reunion is renowned for its flavoured rums, called rum arrange ( or improved rum), and our host made sure we got a full appreciation of them.
Needless to say, we expect to sleep well.....
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