African Indian Ocean Nations
This trip almost didn't happen. This year has been a chaotic mess, and until April, it was unclear whether I'd be taking any more trips. Thankfully, everything fell into place in April. The genesis of the trip was to go to Madagascar for a friend's wedding. However, Madagascar is a very very long distance from California. To make the most of the opportunity, I decided to take advantage of the relative proximity of several other African nations in the western Indian Ocean (Mauritius and Seychelles). The overall easiest way to get there was via the tiny French island of La Reunion, which sits roughly half way between Madagascar and Mauritius. Thus, the trip fell into place, where I flew Air France from SFO to CDG, and then took (the 11 hour, longest domestic flight in the world) the flight from CDG to La Reunion. I spent several days there, did some amazing hiking, then hopped over to Mauritius on a 45 minute flight. Spent a couple days there, then took a 2 hour flight up to Seychelles, spent several days, and finally took a 2 hour flight over to Madgascar for the wedding. It was a pretty good trip overall.
Day 1
The lounge was fine, but very crowded initially, because Korean Air is using it as well. So lots of people flying to Sepul, plus KLM, and then it emptied a bit when it was just my Air France flight. Same exact food as all the previous times.
Boarding was fairly efficient. They claimed a 100% full flight, but I lucked out with the middle seat beside me empty. The guy diagonally across from me apparently checked a dog kennel under the plane. Directly across are, what seems like, a blonde sorority on their first trip to europe (maybe first intl flight too?).
The flight was mostly fine. The middle aged woman sitting beside the window was weird, bordering on obnoxious. At first she kept literally handing me the food that she didn't want. Then she started to spread out into the middle seat & tray table. When I placed my snacks there, she took possession of them. I immediately called her out, and she claimed it was a mistake. Then she attempted to turn the middle seat into a bed, and was kicking me. Just an hour before landing, they made the dreaded call for a doctor. I feared we would divert to London, but thankfully that never happened. We landed about 45 minutes early at CDG, then taxied for a solid 15 minutes.
Of course the terminal that I needed for the flight to Reunion was not the terminal where I arrived. I had to walk forever, then ride a bus, and finally climb 2 flights of escalators (which weren't running), to reach terminal K. I'm pretty sure, that i've never been to K before. The lounge is spread across 3 floors. I got a decent shower, and had lunch. I spent most of the afternoon trying not to fall asleep. I headed to my gate at 16:30.
Day 2
Boarding for La Reunion took forever. So many kids on this flight, including an unaccompanied minor, a ten year old girl sitting beside me, with her grandmother (?) in the row behind us. Also someone had a small yappy dog in a carrier.
The flight kinda sucked. The girl sitting beside me was very sick. Coughing, sneezing, runny nose, everything. Plus she never should have been sitting without adult supervision. She was dropping stuff on the floor, kicking me, and more than once she attempted to sleep on my shoulder. It'll be a small miracle if I don't get sick soon.
The primary flight attendant for my section was a huge jerk. When she saw my setup for attaching my phone to the back of the seat,
she freaked out, grabbed and dumped it in my lap, insisting that it was not permitted.
When I pointed out someone on the other side of the plane doing pretty much the same thing with a tablet, she backed down,
but kept making snide comments about it every time she passed by. I slept a bit about halfway through the 11 hour flight,
but struggled to get comfortable.
We landed at 7am. The airport is on the coast. I had to walk forever to get through the terminal. I found baggage claim, but no passport control. I never went through security or passport control at CDG either. So somehow, I've entered France without ever presenting my passport. Its not hot but very humid.
I found an ATM and got out some cash, and then went to the rental car area, which is way put past the airport parking lot, near the road.
No issues picking up the car from Hertz. I ended up with a weird Renault Clio, that's a hybrid. It was 8am before I got out of the airport.
First stop of the day was at the south end of the island, Anse Major. It took about 90 minutes to get there.
The island definitely has tropical vibes with palm trees everywhere. First I had rush hour traffic going through Saint Denis.
Then I drove on this crazy freeway that runs over the sea, because there are huge volcanic cliffs along the northwest corner of the island.
After that the drive was mostly on a normal freeway with 110kph limits. Anse Major is a bunch of volcanic cliffs and hills jutting out into the sea.
There were a bunch of very steep, maintained hiking trails through the forest leading out to different parts of the cliff.
I saw quite a few others visiting, which was surprising for a monday morning.
The island has a rainy side (east) and sunny side (west). My 2nd stop was another 30 minutes of driving further east along the south coast, Cap Mechant.
It was more scenic volcanic cliffs, but I was already at the top from the parking area. There were a few others visiting, but far less popular.
For lunch there were 3 restaurants near Cap Merchant. One was closed today, so I went to the better reviewed of the remaining two, Etoille des Mers. I ordered pork with hearts of palm, and it was really good. I got a huge bowl of rice, very tender chunks of pork with hearts of palm & peppers, lemon rind marinated in lemon juice & spicy peppers, and huge beans.
After lunch I did the last activity of the day, going to see Grand Gilet Falls. Getting there was a bit of an adventure. I had to drive up into the mountains on a mostly 1 lane road, with 3 single lane bridges, and a bunch of very steep switchbacks. The falls were really pretty. They ran down the face of a sheer cliff in dozens of locations.
The drive to my hotel (2 nights) took about 100 minutes mostly because traffic was terrible in several areas.
Day 3
I went to bed just after 8pm, and slept until my alarm at 6:15am. Breakfast at 7am was kinda sad. Just bread, jam and tea with a few tangerines.
When I went outside to head out, the car refused to start. Sounded like a dead battery. I had a ton of problems calling Hertz for help, as the phone number didn't seem to work. When I asked the woman in the guesthouse, she said that I needed to dial the country code (262) twice for some reason. Sure enough that worked, and I was able to talk to a guy who spoke English and took down my location & phone number. He would call me back once he figured out what they would do. About 20 minutes later, at 8am, he called me back to let me know that a tow truck would be coming with a new battery in 30-45 minutes. 90 minutes later no one had coke so I called back. This time the person who answered spoke almost no English and hung up. I called 2 more times until I got an English speaker, who told me that the tow truck likely didn't know where I was, and wouldn't call my foreign number. They transferred me to the tow company who hung up as soon as I asked if they spoke English. Now I asked the gueshouse woman for help, and she spoke to everyone and the tow truck was going to come in 20 minutes. 10 minutes later the tow truck arrived. Apparently the engine battery in this hybrid is beside the spare in the trunk. The guy knew what he was doing, and swapped out the battery in few minutes. Problem solved. Of course it was after 10am at this point.
I drove out to the national park for the volcano, Piton de la Fornaise. The drive was really pretty, and took about 45 minutes.
The first half was mostly pine forest. Then the road descended a huge cliff overlooking a massive flat lava valley,
with the volcano lurking in the distance. Pavement ended at the bottom of the cliff. There were a decent trickle of cars.
The dirt road was in surprisingly poor conditipn with huge potholes everywhere, making them impossible to avoid.
I reached the end of the road & parking area for the hike just after 11am. The parking lot was pretty large, but maybe 75% full.
I used the stink chimney toilet and then started the hike. The first few minutes was a gentle hill leading to the edge of a cliff.
From there the insanity began. A 544 step staircase snaked down the edge of the cliff to the valley below.
In the distance were a few cinder cones and the masive volcano filling up the horizon. I could see a few dark brown lava trails running down the
side of the volcano.
The walk down the steps was deceptively easy (there were also some people hiking back up). At the bottom, the lava started nearly immrdiately.
It was the smoother, rippled kind that was like a bunch of small hills, and wasn't too bad. After 20 minutes I passed a large cinder cone,
and then I entered a lava field of dark tortured lava that was extremely difficult to walk across. It was uneven, sharp and ugly.
There wasn't really a trail, just a route, marked by white spray painted dots every 2m or so.
The rest of the hike was basically alternating bands of the hilly tolerable lava and the dark razor blade lava.
And then the uphill climb up the volcano started. It was a grind. I started to wonder why my lungs were literally burning.
When my head started pounding, I remembered that I was actually pretty high up (2600m / 8700ft). The views were amazing.
But this hike was easily one of the most difficult that I've ever done. If it wasn't for the elevation and hiking on uneven rock for hours,
the 8 miles wouldn't have been too bad. The hike back was not much easier than going out, because I still had to be extra cautious not
to fall on the razors, plus going back up that 544 step staircase at the end was brutal. I got back to the car at 15:40, and drove back to the guesthouse.
Nearly every town here is named for some saint. Its very weird.
For dinner, I drove 5 minutes to 'the panoramic'. It had good reviews. The chef speaks english, and translated the specials board for me. I ordered a fish soup, and pork fillet eith mushrooms. It was pretty good overall.
Day 4
I slept well until 3am when a barking dog woke me. I eventually fell back to sleep until 7am. I got packed up, and checked out. Thankfully no car problems today.
I drove 30 minutes to the next town over to buy some food for lunch at the supermarket. I ended up getting a 65 cent baguette the length of my arm, a small block of comte cheese (the cheese aisle was insane, and i wanted to buy so many things) and 2 oranges.
Next, I drove 30 minutes up into the national forest. The road was paved the entire way, but was basically 1 lane wide in a very dense, overgrown forest, with lots of blind turns. Thankfully there was little traffic, although the trailhead parking area was nearly full with about a dozen cars.
The 10km hike out to the Trou de Fer waterfall viewing point was in many ways the opposite of yesterday's volcano hike.
The trail mostly went through very dense forest, with massive fern trees (some were maybe 20ft tall), and lots of mud everywhere.
There were also gnarled roots crossing the trail. Lots of small elevation changes, but most were brief.
Large chunks of the trail were wooden raised planks. It definitely wasn't an easy hike, but not as difficult as the volcano.
I needed about 2 hours to reach the view point for the falls. They were amazing, dropping 1000ft into a narrow canyon.
I had my cheese sandwich lunch as I viewed the falls. On the hike back the mud on one hill swallowed my left foot, and it was disgusting.
I made it back to the car just after 2pm.
After that, I had a 90 minute drive back to Saint Denis. Other than a lot of traffic, it went ok. I stopped to get gas, and then checked into the hotel for tonight.
The city is pretty nice, with a lot of narrow one way streets with shops & restaurants. There's also a huge mosque.
Day 5
I didn't sleep well, mostly because I was afraid that I'd somehow miss my alarm. I gave up at 3:30am. I had no issues returning the car, but of course the terminal didn't open until 5am. The ticket counter was aggressively enforcing the 1 carryon rule, and forced me to check my black bag. Passport control was very weird. The guy had this confused look as he realized that I'd never been stamped into France. He checked every page in my passport twice, then gave up and stamped me out, without ever saying a word. Security hated me, and punished me by going through every item in my bag physically and swabbing stuff 6 times for explosives. I should have known that I'd pay a price for not being subjected to security or passport control on the way in. They claimed boarding would start at 6:25am, but when I was using the toilet at 6:20, they announced boarding for a bus gate. I think this airport just wants to screw with me.
When the bus pulled up to the small prop plane, they made an annoincement in French that they were boarding by row number.
Also the plane boarded from the rear. Turned out that I was in row 18 of 19, and therefore boarded last.
Also the last 6 rows of overhead bins were reserved for crew. The safety announcement was a recording by a very British man,
who annunciated every word to a comic degree. We were in the air nearly 10 minutes early.
Passport control had a huge line because a flight from London arrived just before mine. Plus every official asked if I was coming from London because I guess Americans don't come from Reunion? I had to complete an online health survey, then find my bag, and get my rental car. The humidity is crazy, even though its less than 80F.
I needed to drive across the island for the first stop of the day, Chameral Falls. Left hand driving was fine. The roads kinda sucked though. Very narrow, twisty and often not in good condition. Some of the drive was along the southern coast, which looked pretty. I passed a lot of sugarcane plantations, and Hindu temples (with the towers full of colorful creatures). Also, it was raining a bit peridocally. It took over an hour for the drive, and once I arrived, the rain exploded into a heavy down pour. After waiting in the car for over a half hour the rain slowed a bit. I figured i'd just go, and it wasn't too bad. There was a primary viewing point a minute from the parking area where I could see the upper 2/3 of the falls. They're not wide, but do drop a decent distance. Then, a trail another 2 minutes up hill was a much better view point where I saw the entire falls. The water was a reddish brown color, prolly from the rain churning up the river. After that I drove a biy further to '7 colored earth', which is vaguely a tourist trap, where exposed earth has a bunch of color gradients due to oxidation of iron & aluminum. The sky opened up again, and I got a bit soaked walking back to the car.
I was super hungry at this point, so I figured it was a good time to drink rum. The Chameral distillery was 5 minutes drive away.
Unsurprisingly, this place is popular. The parking lot was neatly full, and they ran tours every 20 minutes in english & french.
The tour was good, as they showed every part of the process. The tasting was kinda insane.
11 different rums, some were actually pretty good. They also had a restaurant where I went to eat immediately after the tour/tasting, while I sobered up.
After lunch, I had a 90 minute drive to the hotel. Initially it was more of the same twisty, narrow roads with rain.
But eventually the sky started to clear, and the roads improved too. There was sort of a freeway, with 110kph limits, but they had no exits,
so there were chaotic traffic circles every 1 or 2km.
I got to the hotel at 15:30, and I think I broke their brains. Apparently most of their guests are booked by travel agents on package tours with private drivers. When I had none of those things, they were very confused, and kept asking me the same questions repeatedly.
Day 6
I was hoping to sleep late today, but noise from the rain plus a headache had me up before 8am. Breakfast was a mediocre buffet.
I decided to drive 2 hours south to see La Morne Brabant, a peninsula with a dramatic mountain at its center. It was drizzling when I left at 9:30am.
There were a bunch of nice rainbows for a while, then the skies cleared. The weather was about perfect when I arrived.
I started on a deserted beach, with tiny crabs darting around, and the mountain behind me. Then I drove around to the other side,
where there were lots of kite surfers, and more of a surfer vibe. I had lunch nearby where I had a really yummy octopus salad, and fish curry.
The drive back north took 90 minutes.
Day 7
I slept ok, but was up for the day at 6:45am. I had another mediocre breakfast buffet, and checked out at 9am.
There was a set of 7 waterfalls that I wanted to checkout, about an hour away. When I got there, the trail was a muddy clay mess. Plus it required going down a very steep hill in thick jungle. I decided that it wasn't worth getting filthy or injured and went back to the car.
My flight to Seychelles was at 16:55 and it was just after 10am, so I had a lot of time to kill. I was about a half hour from the airport,
driving back roads just to kill time In the middle of nowhere I came upon a massive Hindu temple. The craziest part was a six story tall deity,
but there were plenty of other smaller statues, including a 20ft tall hanuman, and a row of Vishnu avatars (they were helpfully labeled).
It was such a weird, fascinating discovery.
After that, I stopped for gas, and then returned the car at 11:30am. I was able to checkin and get a boarding pass for my Air Seychelles flight yesterday. But I wasn't sure if this airport was going to honor an electronic boarding pass. They didn't seem to care, and I cleared passport control & security by Noon. I got a chicken sandwich for lunch and killed time waiting for my flight.
This airport has a weird assortment of flights. Frankfurt, Paris, Istanbul, Dubai, Joburg, Reunion, Seychelles, Tana.
My inbound flight arrived 30 minutes late. While waiting to board, I realized that I made a huge miatake booking the rental car for Seychelles. I booked the correct dates but on Mauritius instead of Seychelles. It was way too late to attempt to fix the booking, so I was going to have to wait until I landed, and hope there was a last minute car available.
The flight was 2.5 hours, and they did a full meal service. It was fine, although the landing was rough with a lot of turbulence.
Passport control was very efficient and I was done in 5 mimutes. All of the car rental companies were already closed for the day. I'm not even sure how this would have worked even if I did book correctly. I had to take a taxi for the 20 minute drive to the hotel.
The hotel is really nice. They have their own private beach, and my room is huge. They arranged to get me a rental car starting tomorrow morning.
Day 8
I had a bit of a rough night, as the AC didn't work very well and i kept waking up warm. Plus the AC was blowing on the window shades which made a weird noise.
Breakfast was really nice, with a buffet, plus a menu for hot items. The weather is not nice. Thunderstorms all day today into tonight, and some lingering showers tomorrow too.
I got the rental car, and debated what to do with the crappy weather. I figured i'd go for a drive and decide whether to hike when I got to the trailhead.
The road was this insanely steep, single lane, twisty thing (fully paved though). The weather actually did start to clear, and I did hike on the Copolia trail. Its most of the way up a mountain, in thick jungle. It was pretty, although the humidity was insane. Lots of palms and flowers. After an hour I was back at the car.
I drove southwest down the coast for a while. I passed a tiny town where everyone just got out of church and were spilling out onto the street in their church clothes in the insane heat. It was past noon, so I started looking for somewhere to have lunch. The next beach town had a place with good reviews, Del Place. My table was literally just over the water. I got a virgin mojito (with passion fruit), octopus salad, and fish & chips. Then they brought a plate with olives, peanuts & fritos. It was kinda weird. The food was good overall. Afterwards I drove back to the hotel and relaxed.
The place that I wanted to go for dinner turned out to be closed. I went to another place that wasn't great, but not awful either. I got an appetizer with sardines, and yellowfin tuna curry.
Day 9
I woke up at 6am for no good reason. Birds are very chripy here, even during the night. Breakfast was pretty good again (other than a bird that was trying to steal food).
I departed at 9am for the 25 minute drive across the island for my snorkel tour. The boat was kinda small, but they crammed 19 passengers & 4 crew on. It was a mix of British, Italians, Indians, Russians and Botswanans. The first stop was a 15 minute trip east to Cerf Island, where we snorkeled for an hour. This was, by far, the warmest snorkeling water I've ever experienced. None of that cold water shock jumping in. It felt perfectly warm. The reef was not in great shape though. They said 95% of Seychelles' reef has been bleached since 2000, and it showed. Despite that, there were a nice variety of pretty fish swimming about in water that was less than 2m deep. The wind & tide was kinda crazy and everyone was being pushed north.
After that we got back on the boat and headed further northeast towards Long Island. They handed out bread to everyone to feed the fish. It attracted a crazy number of zebra fish and some huge, ugly bat fish too. Once everyone ran out of bread, we headed the rest of the way to Long Island where they dropped anchor in less than a foot of water. The crew started preparing lunch and everyone was given an hour to explore. There wasn't too much to see on the island, but the views of the other islands were nice.
Lunch was fine. Grilled chicken, fish, hotdogs, shrimp, plus rice & vegetable curry.
Following lunch we got on the boat for a few minutes to get to Moyenne Island. Its claim to fame is the world's smallest national park,
with a giant tortoise sactuary. There's also a beach bar called the Jolly Roger in Pirate's Cove. I "hiked" the 1.5km loop trail.
There were so many tortoises! Some were napping, others were (slowly) walking. Some were munching leaves. It was awesome.
When I finished I got a mango passion colada, which was nice.
Day 10
I slept fine but the damn birds woke me at 6am again. After breakfast, I drove 30 minutes south down the coast to do the Anse Major trail.
It was a nice, short (2km each way) hike. However, the humidity today was insane. I was sweating profusely from every part of my body.
Even my hands & feet.
I finished the hike just after 11am, and drove east across the island to the Takamaka Rum distillery. It was kinda disappointing compared to the experience that I had in Mauritius last week. They only sampled 5 rums, and all of them were harsh and not great. Also, they're supposed to have a food truck, but it was not around today.
It was nearly 1pm, and I was getting very hungry. I found a food 'bus' a few km further south. I got a fish sandwich which was cheap and pretty good.
Since I was pretty far south, I decided to loop around the island's southern coast. It was a nice drive,
with lots of empty palm fringed beaches and small towns.
I got back into the capitol, Victoria, just after 3pm, and decided that it was pizza day. I got takeout to bring back to the hotel. Then I needed to drive back to the hotel, but get gas first, since I needed to return the rental car tonight.
The pizza was surprisingly good.
Day 11
I slept until 5am when the birds got into a fight and were squawking like crazy for 20 minutes. I managed to fall back to sleep until around 7am.
I got breakfast, then killed time until checkout at 11am. For reasons, there was a ton of traffic going to the airport for my flight to Madagascar, but I still got there
very early at 11:40am. The ticket counter opened at 12:20pm. No issues, although they demanded to see my proof of onward travel.
The terminal is 3 bus gates, and the ocean just beyond the tarmac. In the 3.5 hours that I spent in the airport,
there was just 1 other departing flight before mine. Oddly, they replaced the entire 12 person crew on my flight (2 were pilots).
It seems like there might be just 11 passengers (including me) boarding here, which is kinda crazy.
The flight was fine. Seemed to be more than half empty, and I had my row to myself. It was barely over 2 hours long, and Emirates did a full meal service.
The visa process was surprisingly efficient. Although I lucked out, and got in line just ahead of a huge school group.
I swung by an ATM, then looked for the driver. For mystery reasons, half the people with signs were not holding them up,
so it took a while to check all the signs for my name. Traffic from the airport to the hotel was horrendously awful. 20k took 90 minutes.
Day 12
The breakfast buffet was decent overall. We were picked up at Noon for the city tour. Traffic is apparently awful all day long.
We drove an hour north to the king's palace. They attempted to charge us a ridiculous 600 ariary photography fee, which I refused.
This is the palace of the kings dating back to the 18th century. We had a good guide who gave a really good tour of the grounds & buildings.
Other than a few locals, it was basically empty of visitors.
After driving back into town, we stopped at the tourist market. Basically a huge row of dozens of tiny stalls, all basically selling the same trinkets. Lots of fridge magnets, lemurs in varying formats, and baobab tree sculptures. There was literally no one else there, and as we walked past each stall, each seller harassed us to make a purchase. We returned to the hotel by 4pm.
We went out to dinner with Rick & his wife, Misty. The plan was to go to a place called Oxygen, but when we arrived (by taxi), we were told it was closed. We ended up going instead to Le Canapee, in the same hotel. It was a nice dinner overall, more due to the company, than the restaurant.
Day 13
Today was the first of two days for Dylan's wedding festivities. Today was the traditional Malagasy vodiondry ceremony. Everyone boarded a bus from the hotel at 9am, to drive about 40 minutes northwest.
The ceremony itself was a lot of tradition, with speeches, and ceremonial gifts. All of Dylan's guests sat on one side of the room. Afterwards there was a lovely reception.
Day 14
Today was the big Catholic wedding ceremony & celebration. Everyone boarded 2 busses at 10am from the hotel, to go to the church.
Denise & I had the honor of serving as witnesses. The ceremony was mostly in French. There were a lot of wind chime intros for the choir's songs.
The ceremony itself was nice, and thankfully, not excessively lengthy with rituals.
Following the ceremony, we boarded a bus again to head north of Tana for the reception. Traffic was yet again awful. The bus driver somehow got lost, and it took over 2 hours to get there. It was worth the wait, as it was an amazing reception, with a live band, singers, dancing and lots of food.
Day 15
We were up at 4am. We checked out of the hotel, and our driver for the day arrived at 5am. We had a 4 hour drive east to Andasibe Mantabia National Park.
The drive went fairly smoothly, despite twisty mountain roads. We arrived just before 9am, and met with our guide.
We spent the next 3 hours tracking lemurs in the dense, wet, muddy forest. Lemurs are loud, crazy animals, that rarely leave trees.
They leap from one branch to another. We saw lots of different lemurs, plus some well camouflaged geckos.
The weather degraded over the course of the day, resulting in a wet, muddy mess.
After lunch we drove an hour to visit Valona Lodge, where they have an island with more lemurs.
These lemurs were not truly wild, as they'd been habituated to people over time, since most were pets. As a result, they came very close to people.
At this point there was a steady rain, turning everything to mud.
Following that, we got a tour of a weird crocodile farm. It was basically a small zoo, with dozens of crocodiles, plus ducks, turtles, and chameleons.
The drive back to Tana in the rain took about 4.5 hours. We got to the airport just before 9pm for our 0:15 flight to CDG.
The back to back 11 hour flights home were uneventful, but so damn long & exhausting.
It was a good trip to a part of the world that I'd never experienced before. I doubt I'd ever want to return to most of these places, witht the possible exception of Madagascar.
All trip pictures are posted HERE.
A GPX map track from the trip is:
