La Reunion Adventures

Forget Berets and Baguettes – Eve Middleton Opts for Coconuts and Créole Cuisine in France’s Exotic Overseas Département.

- Eve Middleton

If we get there before sunset, we’ll see it blow up close!” shouted our guide Gina into the evening wind, as her other half Matthieu threw the car round tight corners on the forest road with practised ease in our race against time. Spurred on by equal parts of fear, apprehension and fascination, we were speeding towards the Piton de la Fournaise, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, in one of France’s most striking overseas départements: the island of La Réunion in the Indian Ocean.

A back-seat glance to my friend Marion was met with an audible gasp and frantic gesticulating over the roar of the engine; lurching down on to the Plaine des Sables plateau, we were greeted with a lunar landscape of such breathtaking magnitude that any fears soon paled in comparison. Beyond the dusty red flats, we scrambled on foot across the solidified lava flow, and with an ominous rumbling ringing in our ears, took our spot for the show of a lifetime to witness the furnace spew fire from the belly of the Earth.