Megan's island pet...
Roland Garros, I'm flying into his airport....
Beautiful secluded beach...
The island's active volcano...
Typical inland view...
Amazing cemetaries...
Landscaping by God...
Lady of the Lava....
Lady of the Lava's church (and the Lava she saved it from)...
Megan Shopping...
Okay. New adventure time. I'm heading back to Isle de la Réunion to pick up Megan and visit paradise one last time. While there, we're going over to Madagascar, (happy 21st birthday, Meg!) ostensibly to help out with the British Organisation, Azafady. (Fingers crossed). As I didn't get out many pictures from my first trip, I'm including some here. [Sigh.]. There are many, it seems, that prefer the pictorial to the editorial. But then, I guess that's why there are photographers!
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So, sitting here in Charles deGaulle, made it through check-in unscathed. From what I could tell, I was about 1.5kg over the 25kg limit, but I didn't have to pay. They also asked if I had a carry on and I just held up the computer bag (from which I had already taken out the heavy lens). She weighed it and it was fine. I never offered up my backpack (which was on my back) and she never asked. You know, if I worked at an airline counter, there are so many ways I could get back at a mean customer.... charge for every bit of kilo over, look over the counter and spy out every last piece of carry on and make them weigh it. Kind of like Lufthansa does to the NICE customers! (like me!) Ha ha. Now, only 2 hours left until boarding, but I'm sitting by an outlet at the gate. I bought some phone coverage, but I think my old reunion card is no good, so I'll have to buy a new card when I get there. Oh yeah, going through security, the guy asked where my husband was. What's up with that? Are women not allowed to travel alone in France?
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Debarked at Terminal 1, but after finally finding the shuttle area, found a sign in french saying they were no longer continuing the shuttle service, you have to take the train service. Went back inside and walked forever to find the train thing. Could not use a cart so had to juggle my bags up a conveyor belt type ramp. With my 4-wheeled bag... it all went well. Then, when I got off at Terminal 2, armed soldiers were everywhere, blocking people from going certain directions. While I was pulling out my paperwork to see if by chance it told me which sub-terminal in Terminal 2 Air Austral was at (choices were A-G, and in ALL different directions), a soldier came up and told me to départez tout suite! (Leave right away). He did glance at my paperwork and agree to let me head in the right direction. I was really tempted to hang around and see what was going on, but they weren't exactly warm and hospitable.
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Everyone is into the plastic bag thing. Anything that smacks of being a creme, chapstick, eyedrops.... IN THE BAG!!
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Skyped Megan from the gate. She is so excited. I am so excited. Is the island ready for our own reunion? ;-)
[The following was written in September, 06, the beginning of Megan's study abroad... it's been sitting in my email ever since, so... thought it deserved the light of day.... ]
"Hey everyone,
Almost home from Réunion, 29 hours after departure and I'm sitting in Philadelphia at last, waiting for the last leg to Salisbury. So, after a rocky start, the remainder of the trip offered up better days as well as more rocks (in the volcano manner of speaking).
My cold finally went away, Megan started feeling better, and we actually got to see some of the island. It's climate and terrain reminded me very much of Hawaii, that is "the Big Island" of Hawaii. The eastern part is subject to regular showers while the west is generally warmer and sunny. The whole island is a study in contrasts with ongoing fields of sugarcane and stark fields of fresh lava floes (as in from 2001 and 02) on the eastern side, and steep cliffs dropping into the sea co-mingled with resort-esque villages along sandy beaches.
The first two times we went to the beach areas we couldn't find an area where the sea was calm. Our last visit there (having recently been coached by M. Duban) we hit the jackpot and finally discovered the really large lagoon. Huge waves were breaking over an indiscernible sand bar in the distance, but the water at the shoreline calmly lapped the beach. Little kids played at the water's edge and snorkelers were plentiful off-shore. As you can imagine with Megan and I, neither one of us ventured in. For one thing, it was really chilly. Everyone on the island is stymied by the cool weather they've been having as well as the frequent rain periods, both very unusual for this time of year there.
One day, a friend of a friend lent me her boyfriend who took me hiking in one of the rainforests on the island. (I think there's more than one... rainforest, not boyfriend). It was amazing. I saw many plants that only exist on the island, as well as a few species of birds. We also witnessed first-hand the government's attempts at denuding certain forest areas of introduced trees to replant with indigenous species. Kind of appalling to see the barren areas littered with felled, burning trees, but the idea seems good. The hike ended up being about 6 hours schlepping camera gear (he's into photography as well) looking for rare moss species while negotiating extremely muddy, rocky terrain. It was heaven!! Megan was happy to spend that day trying to finish the myriad of paperwork required for the necessities of life at a French university.
Truly the most exhausting part of the trip was the language. Even around the university the majority of people only speak french. No english signs, no bilingual forms... we agreed that we finally had a taste of what foreigners face when they arrive here. Both of us did well at speaking and asking questions. The problems came when people understood us... and then answered in their normal cadence. We would laugh as we recalled our typical blank look we could actually feel spreading across our faces as our success in communicating our needs was met with our failure to understand the answers.
By the end of my visit, though, both of us detected vast improvement in our understanding of them. (The quintessential example of our frustration was on the first night: we had gotten lost trying to find the university after running errands downtown. When we finally arrived at the Univ. gate at 11pm, we had to explain to the guard why we should be allowed in. I thought Megan did a valiant job with her french. But the guard looked at her and said (and we both understood him perfectly) "I'm sorry. You have to speak in French." Now that was frustrating! But funny... now.)
The other thing that happened quite a bit after having to speak in French, is the game of people guessing where we were from. We had: Belgium, England, German, Italian... no one ever guessed American. And when we would tell them, they would smile, laugh, exclaim... everyone thought it was amazing we were there all the way from America.
My last day there, we grabbed lunch at a fast food place obviously populated by only locals. As soon as we started placing our order a crowd of employees gathered around us, literally! We had the usual guessing game, the usual surprise, and really a nice conversation about why we were there. Then, we went and sat around the corner with our food and we could hear them all mimicking our "pauvre francais" with plenty of laughter. Oh well. It made us laugh as well! At least we could understand what they were saying.
By the time I left, we had Megan's room in reasonably homey shape. We found a colorful tablecloth to use on her bed (linens are ridiculously expensive there), found a way to hang up her Mexican flag, and she even solicited another student for an extra gecko from his room to help with her minor ant problem. Because electric teapots were running upwards of $40euros, we found an $8 euro coffeemaker for staples like hot chocolate, tea and ramen-like noodles.
After three attempts, we finally got her student card, checked out the library and wi-fi spots, and figured out where to get things printed. She's waiting for her green card which entitles her to health services (can take 2-3 weeks) and her bus pass (can take 2-3 weeks).
While we never quite got the whole eating lunch and dinner timing correct, (we ate at one pizza place four times, mainly b/c they could understand us and would know what we wanted. It was just easier), we did finally just go to any place that looked open, no matter how much it looked like a seedy bar. We had some good local meals that way and in one place, a very long conversation with a chinese frenchman who owned the restaurant. He really wanted us to come back as his guests, but we couldn't find it again. :-(
As it turns out, if you want to sit down and eat in an actual restaurant, don't go before 7, and be there before 8:30 or 9. The Igloo ice cream place also turned out to be a regular spot when we missed those times. We could get a really good quiche, not to mention incredible crepes filled with dark chocolate sauce. "
