Flamboyants

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This is a flamboyant! These trees are tall, flat-ish on the top, and usually FULL of bright red flowers, so much so that there are more flowers than trees. I keep meaning to stop at my favorite flamboyant to take a better picture than the one that I have here, but I have not dont it yet.

Salazie

The interior of Réunion is made up of high mountain cliffs that are seperated by three bowl-like 'cirques,' or valleys. The hiking and the views are phenomenal. The three cirques of Réunion are Salazie (east), Cilaos (south) and Mafate (west). I spent the past two weekends hiking in Salazie and will spend for days this week backpacking through Mafate, the 'most difficult' and apparently the 'best' cirque. All the hiking trails in Réunion are connected and every October there is this big race called the Grand Raid. You have 63 hours to run 146km. It is insanity.

Parapente

PARASAILING IS THE BOMB!! This was the best weekend ever. Saturday morning we woke up early to take the Car Jaune two hours south to St-Leu on the West Coast. Ten of us then mounted the bus to take us to the top of the hills overlooking the sea and got mentally prepared to jump off the cliff with nothing but a parasail, a guide telling us to "run!", and a camera secured to the wrist to document the event.

I was a bit nervous (not scared, but rather that excited twinge in my stomach) before taking off, but once my harness was on and I saw the wind fill the sails of the parapente, I was ready. Run, run run, wait... I'm already in the air... flying, gliding, so peaceful.

We sailed up into some very low clouds, back down, did loops over a verdant canyon, saw paille en queue (a very graceful white bird with a long straw-like tail), and glided out over the lagoon to get a look at the coral reef. Before my pilot landed us safely on the beach he let me take the controls for a minute or two. Tee hee.

Kayak à Cascade Niagra

Saturday my housemates and I rented kayaks and paddled upstream to the lovely Cascade Niagra (Niagra Falls... not so much...). It was quite a journey as there were many shallow parts- too shallow to paddle so we had to get in and out of our boats a lot in order to drag them through the stream. There were parts, however, that had some sneaky rapids. I have never fallen out of a canoe/kayak in my life, but I managed to fall out THREE, yes 3, times. Not so much embarrassing as ridiculous. The third time was a bit scarry as I was pinned under my kayak by a fallen bamboo branch and the suction of the depression in the kayak kept me from escaping. All's well that ends well, but it was scarry. I have some nice bruises to show as battle wounds. Anne, you would be impressed.

Beachin It

As with most landscapes and sunsets, photos can rarely capture the actual beauty of what was experienced. Despite this, here is a sunset at Saint-Gilles and a view of the beach at Roches Noires.

Weekly Dinner

My housemate Dane had the brilliant suggestions of eating together once a week like a family. We decided that we would each have a partner (yea for the buddy system) and cook for the rest of the house on our specified day. We have done this three times so far and it is definitely comething that we all look forward to. It is our version of like Soup Night and/or Supper Club if you know what they are. Week one was Tortilla Espanola, week 2 cheese fondue and chocolate fondue with fruit, last week was me and Sara who made spinach mousse (possibly my favorite dish ever), my Gramma Myers' amazing shrimp primavera, and the pièce de la résistance was a strawberry-kiwi tart with cinnamon. YUM. Cooking the spinach mousse proved to be a bit of a challenge as they sell neither spinach nor cream of chicken soup here (or breadcrumbs now that i think about it), so we got creative. It turned out to be delicious, to my extreme relief. The pasta was good but not as good as when Gramma makes it.

Pic Adam

My housemate Sara and I needed a hike, so we found a way to get to a good spot via public transportation (not an easy task) and hiked the very vertical Pic Adam. A short and intense 'randonnée,' when clear the views are spectacular.

Dipavali

Dipavali is the Indian/Tamul celebration of light and takes place every October. It is a fabulous parade of singing, music, dancing, street plays, floats, fire, offereings, and smiles. The colors and clothing present were magnificent! Here are a few shots from the parade I went to in Saint André.

Le Halloween

The French do not celebrate Halloween- in fact it is almost uniquely an American celebration. I learned a lot about the holiday's origins this year because I had to present on it to some of my classes. Most of you probably already know that it began as a precursor to All Saint's Day (All Hallow's Eve mutating into Halloween). I guess at some point the trick-or-treating bit began that people baked small current cakes and offered them outside of their homes on All Hallow's Eve to appease the returning spirits, both good and bad. As time sent on folks actually took these cakes around the villages before shutting themselves in at night, waiting for the spirits of the dead to pass through. My guess is they did not sort their cakes into piles according to what kind they received and then tried to trade the bad cakes (smarties and bit-o-honeys) for the good cakes (almond joy and babyruth) with their siblings.

Halloween for us turned into a party on my birthday to which 60+ people showed up. It was rockin'. I was the anti-Chikungunya, but I was in good company with a mosquito, Chikungunya, la Route Littoral, and the Car Jaune. There were other good costumes too. No Jackfruit.

La Route Littoral

Here is the main highway that lines the northern and western coasts of Réunion. La Route Littoral is known for its embouteillages (horrendous traffic jams) and its falling rocks. So many rocks fall every day/week/month/year that the route is often (at least once per week and recently every Sunday) closed, causing these awful embouteillages. Here are some shots of the repair work they have put in place to help keep rocks from killing citizens. Jonathan was La Route Littoral for our Halloween party, hilarious.

First Big Souvenir

This is the beadspread I bought at an Indian market last weekend. It is silk, beautiful, and I love it!

Not-so "Frère" Jacques

This is a Jackfruit. A what? A Jackfruit. Oh, a Jackfruit. (Shout out to Tom Patton). This bad boy grows on trees and is ginormous. Apparently you are supposed to harvest it when it is small, but we didn't know that. I guess the people in the markets don't know that either because they sell huge Jackfruits. Anyway, after hacking at it for ten minutes with a dull chopping knife, Davida and I managed to get it off of the tree in the yard. We then took the sticky beast into the kitchen where it took us another hour or so to open the darn thing, extract a small bit of the edible flesh, and then sautée it with garlic and onions. It ended up tastinglike a potato and, I have to say, was good but not worth the effort. See the goo? See it? That white marshmallow looking substance is as sticky as chewing gum and more imossible to get off. Yes. This is the Jackfruit's natural defense mechanism agains idiots like me. I ended up rubbing canola oil on our knife and hands and cutting boards to release the stickyness and then washed it in a heavty bath of dishsoap.

Roche Ecrite

Hiking la Roche Ecrite was fun and challenging. Going up was not terribly difficult, but coming down my left knee was quite angry with me. It's tough to get old. It was 19km round-trip, about 11 or 12 miles, leading up to the summit of a peak directly across the valley from Piton des Neiges, which was unfortunately obscured by clouds when we arrived. This is my friend Marjorie who has invited me to do a lot of things here. She is so nice and really wants to help me see the sights. She even packs great picnics. She reminds me a lot of my Aunt Karen.

Le Repas Créole

Here are two pictures of a delicious créole meal. You eat on a banana leaf, pile on rice, lentils, and whatever chicken, fish, or vegetable dish has been prepared, then the fun begins. Eating with your hands should be reinstituted in Western society. The process is simple: ball up the food with your fingers and then push it into your mouth with your thumb. This is funny in French because you "pousse avec le pouce." This is done with solid food quite easily and becomes quite a challenge with food items such as tapioca pudding and soup.

Car Jaune

The round-the-island public transportation system is called the Car Jaune and is a great system of yellow busses that run to and from most of the major towns and cities. To indicate the next stop, you must clap twice (loudly) to signal the driver. No fancy buttons or cords here; we do things the old-fashioned way. My only worry is that if I have never been there before, how do I know when to clap?

We take the Car to the beach and we took it to the volcano, which works out nicely. The only trick for the volcano was that the bus stop (arret de bus) is 27km (about 15 miles) from the gite. This meant we had to either hike the 27km in the rainy darkness to get to the gite (obviously not a popular option), or hire a taxi that charged 100€ each direction. After hours of trying to rent a car or find a ride, we called our landlord and she said that here uncle would come get us and drive us to the gite. "Uncle" came to our rescue, drove us up the volcano, and helped us check in. We are not sure what his name is, but we like to call him "Uncle." We had the same transportaiton dilemma descending the mountain, but we felt like calling Uncle again might be too much, so we sucked it up and got the cab. Ouch. We think the Car Jaune should extend its network.

Also, these are those huge travel busses. They can take hairpin turns like you would not believe.

Le Volcan

I just got back from three days hiking Piton de la Fournaise with 3 roomates, the volcano here on Réunion Island. Sadly, our timing was off and we hit three days of cold, cold rain and wind. Needless to say, visibility was limited. The hike itself did not pose too much of a problem, it was mostly the weather that made it difficult.

The volcano is currently 'en erruption,' so the top crater is roped off and several trails are closed. We climbed as high as we could go, looked into part of the crater and only saw a bit of steam, then redescended the lava plain. It is neat to see how different the landscape is: from large, smooth serpentine lava flows to black, holey, jagged rocks to 'lave cordée' that looks like cords of sticks or like when you pour cake mix into a pan (think of the folds). The rather barren, Martian landscape has few signs of life- only a rare lichen-type plant at the lower elevations.

The geologist in me emerged and it was all I could do to limit myself to bringing only two small rocks home with me.

We stayed in a gite, like a small mountain lodge, only we were the last to arrive so we got put out in the tent. It was solid enough to protect from the rain and wind, but still cold, and our soaked clothing and bodies would have liked a roaring fire and some hot cocoa.

My camera did not like the rainy hike and is currently refusing to work. Once I get it fixed I will post some photos. Dont expect much- think 'cloudy.'

La Case

My house is the white house that looks like it belongs on a Greek island, and it is officially know as " the house," or in Créole, "la case." It is great; it came furnished. Not just furnished, but I'm talking pots and pans, sheets, curtains, silverware, more armoires than we know what to do with...

6 of us live in la case, 4 Americans (3 girls- me, Sarah, Davida; 1 boy, Dane), 1 Brittish girl, Caroline, and a Spanish girl, Marina. I am sure that living with 5 women must be a bit much sometimes for Dane, but he takes it in stride. In general we speak English at the house, much to my disappointment, but Marina is really good about speaking French with me. She is also very gracious when she corrects me if I make errors, for which I am so grateful. Improving one's abilities in a language requires lots of practice and making lots of mistakes. Good thing I do a lot of both!

The best part about the house has to be our electrical appliance situation. We have no hot water, even though the ouvriers (workers) have installed a chauffe-eau (water heater) in addition to the solar heater, it does not work when we use it. Seriously, only when the ouvriers are there does any hot water come out, and only for about 5 minutes. The problem is not the number of people using all the hot water, it is that there IS no hot water. Our "big" fridge went out the other day and our small fridge freezes everything. Surprisingly, the situation does not irritate me; I find it really humorous. Although, I would really like a hot shower... The other thing is that we just bought a washing machine, the 6 of us together. I have never made such an grown-up purchase, 1/6 of a washing machine.

We live on chemin des orangers, which means "Orange Tree Lane." Poetic, non? It is at the top of a hilly neighborhood called le Moufia and it is quite a walk to/from the grocery store. "Sweat" is the word that comes to mind.

The past two days have been windy but beautiful. Tonight I am going to a Créole festival. Should be good food. I am going to the beach again tomorrow and have plans to hike the VOLCANO next Monday!

That's all for now, take care everyone!
Love, Katie

Petit Marché

The main shopping district in Saint-Denis is a pedestrian-only zone. Yes! You would appreciate this even more if you knew how horrific drivers were here. Just south of the stores is the open air market. From 6am to 6pm each day, you can find any fruit, vegetable, flower, or meat or fish product your heart desires. These are always amazing no matter where you go, but one thing that I have noticed here is the incredible diversity of fruits that I have never seen. Walking though you can smell the sweetness of the thousands (literally) of pineapples, papayas, "beef hearts" (a fruit), goyaviers, fruit de la passion, coconuts, etc. Tropic and exotic is normal here! I have to tell you, buying an entire pineapple for 1€ is enough to perk me up from any bad mood. Hope you enjoy the photos.

Chez moi

The gorgeous house I live in!

Side view of house, and a papaya tree!

View of the Indian Ocean from our balcony... bliss...


Arbre des touristes, fills with water during the rains, then holds it in its trunk... just in case tourists need a drink!

Lovely coconut palms...

Plus d'images de la Réunion

La Réunion is a land of many different cultures and religions. Here are some Hindu and Tamil temples as well as the mosque down town (white minaret) and the mosque near the university (copper dome). Also, me at a fancy hotel pool (just visiting...).

La Réunion enfin!

Finally! You get to see some images of this beautiful place. I have tried to be select in what I show you (i have like 100 photos I could put up), so please enjoy some ocean views and administrative buildings!