October 21st

Awoke, showered, and packed. We had a light breakfast of muesli yogurt, and toasted baguette with blue cheese (which surprisingly worked well). I had espresso coffee. Jeff had Earl Grey Tea. We texted the Airbnb guy (who lives in the other part of the duplex). He came right out and said our goodbyes. So we leave the capital, Saint-Denis area without agenda except to get to our next Airbnb four to five pm (which is around Petite-Ile area.) So we take the big coastal road, N1, along the west coast from the north to the south. This island is small. We took our time and putz about.

Before we left the Capital area we did look for a barber, again it did not happen. So back to the N1. Next thing we notice we are on a very long bridge over the water. This had to have been quite an undertaking!!! The French put some money into this!  Anyway, we continued on, but meandered along the smaller coastal roads when able, like around Le Port. There was a big festival/market ending there. There were a couple of big grills doing skewers of meat, but was to early for us, 11ish, so we did not stop. Smelled great and we were hopeful to see some further south.

We continued on to Saint-Paul. This is a very touristy town. We stopped at the tourist info place. One of the ladies spoke English and explained some places of interest (but will have to be next week for us). After Saint-Paul there is a long beach area, basically clear to the next big town, Saint-Leu. The rain started here. It has been cloudy most of the day, and finally let loose a fine mist to a light rain. The beach changed to just rock and some cliffs. Jeff said could almost be some places in Oregon, but the rocks in the water weren't big enough. We did notice something different, they have gathered some rocks and built little pool areas along the way.

We stopped at Pointe au Sel, where they make salt from the sea. There was supposed to be a museum, but by the looks of things it has not been opened in quite some time. We continued on turning the corner so to speak and we are heading back east along the southern coast. We were looking for those open grills for lunch, but no luck. We eat some cashews we had. Somewhere along L'Etang-Sale les Bains or Saint-Louis we settled on a chain Planet Taco. We each had a burger. They were pretty good.

We were a bit early. So we went to the town past Petite-Ile, Saint-Joseph. We went just to the big ravine in town and decided to go on smaller roads up a wee bit North to where we were staying. Oh boy! We did some serious climbing up. It was very steep, switchback, often one lane road; and our poor little Peugeot (I've named it Pogo)… well Jeff had it in first gear, a bunch! We finally found the Airbnb. We met the lady and she showed us around. It is their home. We are basically in a converted attic room upstairs. She said her husband sleeps in a room up here and shares the bathroom. She, Claude is the main contact on the Airbnb. The husband, Alan or Alec, arrived within an hour or so. He does not speak English as well, but way better than I do French, and he mostly gets his points across. We all rely a bit on Google Translate. They prepared us supper: baked chicken, french fries, salad and a just made cassava cake (the farmer neighbor just brought over fresh grated cassava- so Claude made it into a cake). We had brought some French wine (she drinks but he does not). We enjoyed dinner. They both are very nice and we had good conversations during the meal. They were both born in Casablanca, Morocco! (They did not know each other, but that was a fun fact about them.) They travel some and have lived on Reunion Island for 42 yrs. They have two grown children – oldest is 45, and they have two grandchildren. They also have two dogs, a cat and chickens. We thanked them for dinner and headed up to our room and to bed by 10 pm. 

It was a pleasant day, even though we had some rain. Maybe it was nice because we made some connections.