34th post - Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is also celebrated here, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. So, in the absence of a significant other, I forced my roommates to do something with me (okay, maybe they wanted to do that voluntarily, who knows).

After Nanou returned from work at 9 a.m., we headed east with Léa to tackle a two-basin hike. The drive to the starting point also went very well, apart from the fact that we had targeted the wrong starting point.

Accordingly, we made our way through muddy and flooded dirt roads and played a bit of scouting until we found the originally intended hiking trail again. With wet shoes and mud up to our knees, we continued on and on in the sweltering heat, crossing a cute little forest and enjoying really cute viewpoints.

After about 1-2 hours we reached the first basin: Bassin les Aigrettes . Not to be confused with the other Bassin les Aigrettes , which is located on the other side of the island, namely to the west. It was beautiful here, it was a huge pool of water and there was no other person in sight (weird, I thought on Valentine's Day everyone goes through mud puddles and then bathes in rainwater in the middle of the jungle, weird). We enjoyed the threesome, bathed, ate a little something, sunbathed and chatted. In between, I went fishing for my pants, which unfortunately the wind almost blew down the waterfall - but I was just able to save them.

After some time we moved on to the Bassin la mer , not to be confused with the other Bassin la mer , which is on exactly the same side of the island, namely in the east. To get there we did a demi-tour until we turned left instead of right at a junction to get back on the hiking trail.

After about 30 minutes we had reached the even larger basin a little further downstream and quickly understood why it was called Bassin la mer : the enormous waterfall caused waves like those in the sea - a cool experience!

There weren't quite three of us here, but rather turned the togetherness of a couple into a fivesome, whereupon the two of them quickly fled. We, on the other hand, ate again, bathed again and didn't chat, though, because we all took a little nap. We also spent a lot of time here before we made our way home. This turned out to be significantly longer than expected because our car wasn't where it was supposed to be.

However, we were comforted with a spectacular river in the middle of the mountains, flowing on white stone with black volcanic sand. Unfortunately, not only did we find this very nice, but so did all the mosquitoes that had ever touched the air on this island, which is why I now look like I have chickenpox. At least I can now say that on this day of love, hundreds rushed to touch my skin.

About seven hours after we left home, we arrived back home and took a nap. Sleeping is great!

In the evening we watched a Disney film with the shared apartment and Romane and I went to the cinema (the others all had to get out early, were tired or had sunstroke. Or didn't feel like doing any more couples activities with me :D). We watched the movie “One Love,” an autobiography of Bob Marley. That was really very interesting and a very nice, relaxed end to the day :)