For the longest time, I had supposed that the Indian Ocean island of Réunion would be much like nearby Mauritius, a place I have visited on half a dozen occasions. On a map, both are of a similar size and shape, looking like two peas in a big blue pod somewhere to the east of Madagascar. Both are volcanic in origin, having been created eons ago by the same hot spot in the earth’s crust. They share a not dissimilar history.
So my first glimpse of Réunion is a revelation. As the Air Mauritius turboprop banks toward Sainte-Marie, I look down on an unexpected landscape. Unlike the comparatively gentle contours of Mauritius, Réunion slopes quickly up from the sea toward a jagged, mountainous interior dominated by three vast calderas, called cirques, formed by the collapse of an ancient shield volcano. Each is rimmed by sheer cliffs and sawtooth pinnacles. Piton des Neiges is the island’s highest peak; at an elevation of just over 3,000 meters, it’s also the highest point in the entire Indian Ocean.
On the ground, it becomes quickly apparent that Réunion — like Mauritius, a onetime French colony — is still very much a part of France. As a French overseas , the island is the outermost region of the eurozone; this was, oddly enough, the first place that euro banknotes went into circulation back in 2002. Above the grand old government buildings of Saint-Denis, sit among the pastelhued houses of languid west-coast resort towns such as Saint-Gilles-les-Bains and Saint-Leu. The roads teem with Citroëns, Renaults, Peugeots. And the vast majority of visitors fly in from “mainland” France, which partly explains the paucity of English speakers.
