Posts In The “Destinations” Category
The Foret de Bebour-Belouve is a lush tropical rainforest in the center of Reunion, directly south of the Cirque de Salazie, and within the island’s wetter east coast region. The forest is beautiful, with lots of walking tracks and picnic spots, but our primary motivation for visiting was to make the 3.5km walk to the…
We completed our three-cirque tour at Cirque de Cilaos. The road up was the most winding, steep and difficult Reunion road we’d driven so far. And that is saying a lot. The scenery en route and inside the cirque was incredible, with views into deep river gorges and soaring peaks. Trip highlights from October 14th…
Our NavNet 3D black box failed as we neared Reunion. After some debugging, we determined we needed a replacement Elsa Gladiac 776 GS graphics card, last produced in 2006. We’d first gone to Le Port computer store Plug n Play in an attempt to buy a low-voltage relay for another project. It turns out Plug…
Among Reunion’s many natural wonders is Piton de la Fournaise, an active and accessible volcano at the south end of the island known locally as simply le volcan (the volcano). We were lucky to be there during a period of active eruptions, and spent hours watching as lava constantly boiled, bubbled, and spewed out. Trip…
The French Oceanographic research vessel Marion Dufresne arrived into Reunion and we were able to get on board for a tour. The ship is registered in Marseilles, but operarates from Reunion, serving the French Southern Indian Ocean and Antarctic holdings. Trip highlights from October 4th follow. Click any image for a larger view, or click…
The viewpoints into the mountains of Reunion are best visited early in the morning as by mid-morning they often cloud in. So we left Le Port at 5:30am on the 39km drive to Le Maido to take in the sweeping views into the Cirque de Mafete. The panorama was astonishing, and even better than we…
Rain was predicted to fall the entire day, but we really wanted to get out and explore more of the island. Cirque de Salazie is one of three volcanic calderas at the island’s center and the access road is full of impressive waterfalls, so we figured this would be a good day for a waterfall…
A few days after we arrived in Reunion, we rented a car to explore more of the island. Our first trip was to the capitol city of St. Denis. Founded in 1668 and named the island capitol in 1738, St. Denis is rich in colonial history with many well-preserved heritage buildings. After spending a few…
After 10 days in Rodrigues, we made a 3-night, 467-nm trip to Reunion. Port Louis, Mauritius is the typical next port for most pleasure craft–we don’t know of a single other pleasure craft that’s gone to Reunion directly from Rodrigues. If we didn’t have to clear out and clear back in again at Port Louis,…
Near the end of our stay in Rodrigues, we rented a scooter for a couple of days and travelled pretty much every road in the island. It was a fun and easy way to get out and see the sights, including the Francois Leguat Giant Tortoise and Cave Reserve, the east coast beaches, and some…
We arrived into Port Mathurin on a Saturday and fueled the following Thursday. This isn’t to say that fueling was one of the things we did on Thursday–that’s all we did that day and we were lucky to get it done in a day. Highlights from September 20th follow. Click any image for a larger…
We spent our first few days in Rodrigues completing our clearance, getting a few boat projects done and exploring the area around Port Mathurin. We also picked up a SIM card for cellular data–it’s great to have always-on connectivity again after running for so many days on BGAN. Trip highlights from September 12th through 16th…
We arrived into Rodrigues, Mauritius from Dampier, Australia after 19 nights and 3,023 nautical miles at sea. The seas were a little rougher on the second half of the trip compared to the first half. But we still had several days of calm weather and the big seas didn’t last long. Overall we had an…
We reached the halfway point of our 3,005nm Indian Ocean crossing after ten days at sea. By that time, we’d drained all three of our deck bladders and were back to close to full fuel tanks for the remaining 1,500 miles of the trip. The weather for this first half of the passage has been…
Relatively few pleasure craft clear out of Australia at Dampier—we didn’t know of any that had. For us, it worked out well—our exit was smooth and efficient. John Lally, commodore of the local Hampton Harbour Boat and Sailing Club (HHBSC), was very welcoming and helpful in answering our questions prior to arrival. The HHBSC has…
After leaving Darwin, we ran 1,000nm south to Dampier, where we planned to exit Australia for the 3,000-mile Indian Ocean crossing to Rodrigues, Mauritius. En route to Dampier, we stopped off for a few days in the southernmost portion of the Kimberley coast that we’d missed on our previous trip. We chose Dampier because it…
Our third road trip after Litchfield and Kakadu National Parks was to Northline Speedway to take in the sprint car action on their clay oval. We spent the last few days in Darwin at anchor in Fannie Bay before heading out across the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf to start the 1,000nm run to Dampier where we…
World Heritage Listed Kakadu National Park is known for incredible natural beauty and impressive rock paintings. Kakadu also is full of walking tracks that would take many days to cover. Since we only had a day, we picked the ones that appeared to have the most interesting scenery and views. Trip highlights from August 6th…