I went to « la Plaine des Palmistes » on the 31st of December and that is where I met him.
There is nothing better than a good palm salad to end the year, we went to the Payet estate in “la plaine des palmistes” to get some palms. Mr Payet greeted us and showed us where he spends most of his time, the area where the palm trees are growing is so big that roughly 4 tons of edible palm hearts are produced each year. He is growing red palms also called barbel palms endemic to Reunion Island, white palms also called princess palms from Mauritius and royal palms. We came to get barbel palms, I like them better than the princess palms because I think they have a more subtle taste. The white palm has a huge advantage over the red palm: it never oxidizes. The red palm is very sensitive to nitrogen in the air; when one wants to make a salad, one will have to hurry to separate the upper part of the palm. If you don't hurry up, the beautiful white pulp composed of water for 80% will start to blacken; it won't change the taste but it will look less nice in your plate. You can see how to extract a palm heart from its peel below. In addition to not oxidizing, the white palm will grow a new sprout when one is cut and it will take 3 month to reach the right size. It takes 3 years for the red palm to reach its maturity and once it is cut a new palm needs to be planted.
We came upon a jackfruit tree as we were about to leave, its fruits look a little bit like the durian but thankfully they don't smell the same at all. Mr Payet went close to a fruit, reached for his machete and cut the tail of the fruit with a swift strike; he then looked at us and said that the fruit was ripe and that we could take it. I thanked him, leaned to grab the fruit and recovered with more difficulty than I would have expected because the fruit weighed around 10kg (it can weigh up to 25kg).
Back to the flat it was time to look inside the belly of the beast. I had to cut inside the fruit to get the pods that are edible. It was my first time opening up such a fruit I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I cut a square in the fruit and started peeling it; I discovered pods glued to a lot of filaments. I reached inside the fruit to grab a pod and check that I will be eating the right part. The pods were firmly fixed at the base of the fruit, one pod broke when I pulled on it. I put one part of the pod after extracting it from the fruit, it was sweet, didn't have a strong taste but was good. For the second attempt I reached for the base of a pod and grabbed it strongly while pulling to get it out and this time I got a nice pod covered with filaments that looked like tagliatelle. I started removing more pods, after a while I could see that I had sticky stuff on my hands. The sap of the jackfruit is extremely sticky and the filaments in the fruit are full of it. I had to clean my hands 5 times to get rid of most of the glue. In Reunion Island the sap is called “colle jacque” it was used to catch birds. To be able to work with the fruit and not be bothered with the sap, you have to cover your hands and knife with oil.
The jackfruit is of of those fruits found in Reunion Island that don't have a lot of taste but are good nonetheless, don't hesitate to try one if you get the opportunity.
Happy New Year 2012.
Now that I have less work I took the time to go to « le Piton des Neiges ».
We left Cilaos on Thursday and got some rain as soon as we started walking. The hike to “le Piton des Neiges” can be done in two different ways: you can walk roughly 5 hours with an elevation of 1700 meters, you can walk roughly 3 hours with an elevation of 1100 meters, spend the night in some sort of cottage and start walking at 3 in the morning to walk the remaining 2 hours with an elevation of 600 meters. We chose the second option. You can only walk up during the hike and the few moments with no elevation are very short. You start the hike in a quiet forest and it is very pleasant but the steps made to avoid the path from becoming too slippery can quickly become tiring. I don't hike often, I need some time for my body to get warmed up and to be able to walk properly, things are easier when I am walking on a flat track or a track with a small elevation. In this case having to produce such an effort to walk along the steep track that lead to the pass on the way to “le Piton des Neiges” was very difficult for my legs. We couldn't really enjoy the landscape on our way up, the clouds that were quite low were blocking the view as well as bringing rain. I started reducing my speed as soon as I felt my heart beating too strongly, I did exactly the same thing as when I was riding a bike on “la Route du Volcan” I would go as slowly as possible to be sure to get to the end.
I didn't need to achieve anything, I just wanted to reach the goal of the day which was the cottage. I was slowly walking behind my hiking partners with small steps, I had my poncho on and my eyes were only looking at the ground to avoid loosing my motivation. My partners had a nice rhythm but there was no way for me to try and follow their rhythm or I wouldn't last very long. I stopped walking each time I felt like it but tried at the same time not to do it too often. We finally made it to the cottage after a 3 hour walk, we had walked for 8 km. It was still raining when we got there, we were soaked from the rain as well as the sweat but it was great. We changed clothed, got warm, ate a very good “rougail saucisse” and went to be straight away because we had to wake up at 2:30 AM.
I couldn't sleep and I have no idea why. I had two blankets to be warm, I even removed one during the night; I usually can sleep anywhere but this time I had plenty of time to count the sheep and sing songs to myself. Waking up at 2:30 AM was not difficult at all but starting walking in the dark and under the rain to get to “le Piton des Neiges” was. We started walking on a very rocky track with our headlamps to help us. Walking on rocks is usually a pain but it is even worse under the rain, sleepless and with headlamps. I was afraid to twist my ankle during the whole walk, the rocks were slippery and being tired really didn't help. Each time I go hiking and it gets tough I tell myself “I hate hiking but here I am so better reach the goal” and I indeed hate hiking but it is the price to pay to see amazing landscapes. An hour later I raised my head and saw that it was not raining anymore but more than that I could see the stars. The possibility of seeing the sun rise at the top without any clouds to block the view got me in a very good mood. We were halfway, I was very tired but I was almost there. 20 minutes later we were back inside the clouds and I was quite disappointed, the top was getting close and it would be a shame if it would be completely inside the clouds. 15 minutes before getting to the top we got rewarded, we were above the clouds and we would get our sunrise.
We got to the top 30 minutes before the sunrise. Waiting for the sun to rise in the wind and the cold is great when you are all sweaty but it sure was worth it. We had a sea of clouds in front of us where we could see “le Piton de la Fournaise”. Le sun rose behind the volcano, we were looking forward for it to bring some light but mostly warm us. It was happiness after torture, we enjoyed the sun's warmth a while before walking back down. Here is something less for me to do in La Reunion: I was on top of the highest point in La Reunion and watched the sun rise and I can assure you I will not do that again anytime soon.
Reunion Island is great but life is different when nothing is going right at work.
My work is fairly simple, I have to setup different types of machines and have them talk to each other. The reality is of course quite complex and you really see it when those nice machines decide not to do what they are supposed to. I came back to Reunion Island to increase the capacity and the features of the machines, to do so I need to upgrade the software they use. This type of operation usually occur at night when most customers are sleeping and are not using their phones. I often start working around 11 PM, end up in bed around 3 or 4 AM if I am lucky and much later if I am not.
Things usually go like this: we get to the workplace we check that everything is working well (this way if something is not working afterwards we know that it is our doing) we do whatever needs to be done we check that everything is still working well if there is no issue we go home if there is something wrong we try to find a solution if we haven't found anything around 5 PM we undo whatever we did hoping the issue will disappear if the issue is still there once we are back to the way things were before then we are screwed Issues usually occur a few seconds after modifications have been done but they can sometime be sneaky.
One day a problem occurred 21 hours after our modifications. In this case I have the pleasure of spending my evening on the phone and in front of my laptop to try and bring everything back to normal. A customer once complained but was unable to tell us when his issue started (knowing when an issue first occurred helps us compare with the modifications we did on that day). We tried to reproduce what was described by the customer but weren't successful, in this case this means for us that the customer doesn't know how to use his phone. The customer kept on complaining but we would still not be able to reproduce his problem. In the end the customer was right to insist, he was the only one with the problem and we would have never seen anything if not for him. The thing I like best is getting emails after working during the night where I would find diagrams showing how everything was great before and how it was all bad since I changed some things. In some cases it becomes so bad that I can't even wait till the night to change everything back but mostly I am good for another night to erase the previous nights work. The crown goes to the change that will create 3 or 4 different problems and give the impression of originating from different machines. With this one you get long nights in front of the laptop coupled with lengthy emails and phone calls to explain those who are supposed to help you what you did before trouble started.
It is great once things calm down. It was to a point where everybody was coming to us when there was an issue even if it was not related and we were starting to doubt everything we were doing. After 2 hard months things are back to normal and I have more energy to enjoy the beach.
I went for a bike ride a few days ago that I will never forget it.
We left at 7 in the morning to get to “la route du volcan”. Once on the road, we left the car halfway to our destination and started riding the bikes. The weather was nice, the top of “le piton des neiges” was not yet covered with clouds, I was wearing an extra jacket because it was cold. The bike ride started with an easy pace, I tried not to go too fast because I knew that we had quite a long way to go and I wanted to keep my strength. I found out that I started having difficulties as soon as the road tilt reached a certain level. I was riding my bike while being on the fourth speed of the bike in the middle plateau but I quickly found myself on the first speed in the largest plateau. I was not used to riding a bike for long distances, I tried to ride as slow as possible to not tire my legs too fast: I was going so slow at some point that I had a hard time going straight.
My legs were hurting so much in the hairpins that I had to stop at each curve to rest. I gave myself goals to reach during the ride to help me go forward. The few times I have been on a bike I was either riding in Paris or going down “le Maido” on a mountain bike. I felt a great deal of satisfaction when I reached “le pas de sable”, there were only a few hairpins left separating me from the place I like the most on this earth: “la plaine des sables”. We had a short boomerang session, it was everything I needed to relax after the suffering. Throwing boomerangs in “la plaine des sables” is the third thing I like to do most on this island after scuba diving and mountain bike hiking. I caught the boomerang twice, lets hope I will catch it even more next time. We concluded the bike ride to reach “le pas de bellecombe”, we were on a dirt road and had to breathe all the dust that each car passing us by was raising while we were avoiding potholes.
The way back was easier as there was more down than up but the climb up from “la plaine des sables” was tough. The ride to “le pas de bellecombe” had killed my legs and I didn’t have the energy to climb that kind of road without stopping to rest at each curve. I found out on the way back that I could actually ride without any problems when the tilt of the road was light but my strength went very fast when the tilt increased. When I was speeding down the road I couldn’t stop myself saying: I rode all that up! The clouds started to gather and a light drizzle started that was quite refreshing. Of course the drizzle turned into rain and I had to slow down to avoid getting out of the road. The change of the strength in the rain made me feel like I had stepped through an invisible door. I was feeling like I was close to the end of the ride and remembered that we had started with a slope, the ride had to end with a rise! I remembered the rise to be short but it just wouldn’t stop, I don’t remember how many times I had to stop to relax my legs. At some point I think I even stopped every 5 or 10 kicks. I eventually reached our starting point, the whole ride was 32km long and had roughly 300 meters of positive elevation.
Imagine you are watching the circus show PFFFFFFF from the company Akoreacro. The soundtrack of the show is mostly Eastern European jazz but all of a sudden two of the artists on stage do this.
I have seen this show last friday and i liked it so much that i would have seen it a second time this week if it wasn't sold out, i recommend it.
