35th post - Cilaos

My friend Lorenza asked me two days before whether I would like to spend a day with the other Erasmus participants in Cilaos , one of the Cirques . Of course I said yes straight away, because the Cirques are always incredibly beautiful and I hadn't been there for a long time. A day before, my weather app said: Warning of heavy rain and squalls, probability 100%. The stupid thing about the mountains is that you're there mainly for the view, and when it rains and you're hanging in the clouds, the whole thing is surprisingly not fun. But Lorenza definitely wanted to go because rain in Cilaos is still better than rain in Saint-Denis.

So we set off at 5 a.m. in heavy rain and drove about 1.5 hours south to Saint-Louis. Luckily, when we got there it was only drizzling, because from there we tried to find a hitchhiking stop all the way up to Cilaos . I didn't dare take the " Rue de 400 virages " (Street of 400 Curves), especially not when there was a storm forecast. The whole thing wasn't that easy, as nobody goes up into the mountains on Saturdays when the weather is bad, but we were lucky and got to the top on time at 8am.

There we met the others who had spent the night in Cilaos and were greeted by a rainbow like I had never seen before. It was so beautiful, I almost started crying :D

After this little ray of hope, the day was of course a good one, because from that moment on we didn't see a single drop of rain and the clouds hung high, so we had great visibility until late in the afternoon - I really didn't expect that.

At the starting point of the hike we met two furry hiking friends who were really cuddly - nothing could go wrong today, with all the good luck!

After a few cuddles we hiked off to Bras Rouge , a waterfall in Cilaos . I already knew that part of the hike, but it was still really nice.

Then we continued to another waterfall, next to which we had to cross the river. That turned out to be surprisingly difficult because the water was up to our bottoms due to the heavy rain of the previous days and we still had our backpacks etc. on.

After that was done, we then went steeply uphill for one kilometer, 2oo meters in altitude, until we came to the Alfred basin . It's a nice place with super light stone (like everywhere else in the area) and there were quite a few people there. Here we took our break, ate something and refreshed ourselves in the really cool water. After a good hour or more, all of the other people suddenly started leaving at the same time, so we decided it seemed like a good idea to leave now.

Unfortunately, right after the break we had another 1.5 kilometers and 200 m in altitude, but it actually went surprisingly well. 3.5 kilometers before the end of the hike we came across a road where over half of the group decided to continue on that same road because it was less steep and shorter.

So there were three of us left because we were too stubborn to “give up” right before the end. It was really worth it, because the path was beautiful and really not particularly strenuous; The view was beautiful and we came to the Bassin Bleu . As inviting as it was, we were all really tired and just wanted to go home, so we decided not to go swimming.

After about seven hours of hiking we arrived back in Cilaos , about an hour after the others, but with the feeling of being something better :D

While the others went back to their rented AirBnB, Lorenza and I looked for a ride down. This time it took quite a long time, but it worked in the end.

From Saint-Louis we drove home for about two hours, happy and exhausted, and then fell into bed exhausted.

I really didn't believe the day would be so beautiful.