The Volcano

We went this week-end to "le piton de la fournaise" for a hike to the volcano. We drove after my work to the southern part of the island, up the road that leads to "la plaine des cafres" to go sleep in "le gite du volcan". We wanted to start early on Saturday morning.



We left Saint-Gilles at 5:50 PM and reached the cottage at 8:50 PM with a 30 minutes diner break. The people who have already been there know that the road is quite sinuous when you are in the forest and that it is in very bad shape when get close to the volcano. The drive was quite difficult for my wife as she is still in the learning process, it was night time when we got to our destination and there was no lighting on the road. The serpentine path was so narrow in some case that you couldn’t feel safe especially when the headlights would show that there is absolutely nothing beyond the road.



We went straight to the dormitory as soon as we reached the cottage. The car thermometer showed that it was 3°C outside, I don’t know why I thought that cottages have eating but my wife and the 3 blankets laid on my bed showed me I was wrong. There is nothing to do except preparing the bed quickly and going to sleep otherwise you will start asking yourself if the volcano is worth all this pain. The night was interesting, I woke up many time during the night because of the cold even with my 3 blankets. My wife slept with her clothes on but she wasn’t warmer than I was. The best part of the night was when I had to get dressed to go to the restroom; it was so sweet to have to put back all my cold clothes on for less than a minute.



We woke up a 5:45 AM to be able to see the sun rise from "le Pas de Bellecombe" before starting our hike. No need to tell you that waking up was tough but you are completely awake once your feet touch the cold floor! We went to get breakfast once we were dressed, exited the dormitory and… it was raining and the fog was totally covering the sky. We asked during breakfast if the weather may change, the answer was that the weather changes too quickly around the volcano and it was dangerous to start hiking under theses conditions. We decided to go to "le Pas de Bellecombe" to take a picture (the first one of this post), the volcano is somewhere behind this. The way back home took us only 2 hours and we were greeted in Saint-Gilles by a beautiful blue sky. C’est la vie!