Réunion

⚠️ Entry rules and local regulations change without notice. Before booking, check entry requirements and local rules — visas, access, nature reserves, visitor quotas — with the official authorities.

Réunion, a French overseas department and region in the Indian Ocean, is a stunningly beautiful volcanic island nestled between Mauritius and Madagascar. Dominated by the Piton de la Fournaise (2,631 m), one of the world's most active volcanoes, the island offers breathtaking landscapes: the three natural cirques of Cilaos, Mafate and Salazie, listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites, make for exceptional hiking terrain. The west coast unfurls its lagoon beaches sheltered by a coral reef — Saint-Gilles-les-Bains, l'Hermitage and Boucan Canot beach. The island's Réunion Creole culture, a blend of European, African, Indian and Malagasy heritage, shines through in its cuisine (caris, rougails, samoussas) and traditional music (maloya). Intense and full of contrasts, Réunion combines volcanoes, tropical forests and a turquoise lagoon in just 2,512 km².

A volcano you can walk on, a mountain you can walk into

Réunion is a French department in the Indian Ocean, 2,512 km² of volcanic island rising to 3,070 metres at the Piton des Neiges — the highest point in the Indian Ocean — and home to around 870,000 people. Forty per cent of it is a national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the reason is the interior: three vast cirques, Mafate, Cilaos and Salazie, carved into the old volcano, with villages inside them reached only on foot or by hairpin roads, and hundreds of kilometres of marked trails, including the GR R1 and R2 that cross the island from end to end.

The Piton de la Fournaise, in the south-east, is one of the most active volcanoes in the world: it erupts most years, usually gently, with lava fountains and flows that can be watched from marked viewpoints, and on quiet days you can walk across the Enclos Fouqué caldera to the summit crater. The 2007 eruption sent lava to the sea and buried part of the coast road; the Grand Brûlé, where the flows reach the ocean, is black rock slowly greening.

The coast is the Creole island: Saint-Denis and its colonial houses, the lagoon beaches of the west at L'Ermitage, Saint-Leu and Saint-Pierre, the cane fields, the temples, mosques and churches side by side, and a population mixed from Africa, India, Madagascar, China and France. Réunion has the feel of France overseas, which it is, and of somewhere else entirely.

May to November for the mountains

The southern-hemisphere winter — May to November — is dry, cooler (20–26 °C on the coast, near freezing at night on the summits) and the season for hiking and the volcano, with clear mornings and cloud building by midday. Summer, December to April, is hot, humid and cyclonic: heavy rain in the east and the cirques, trails closed after storms. Whales pass from June to October. Start every walk at dawn — the cloud comes up the slopes every afternoon, all year.

Hire a car, book the gîtes, start early

Flights from Paris take about eleven hours to Roland-Garros airport near Saint-Denis; the island is France — a French or EU identity card is enough, euro, no formality. A hire car is essential: the island is 70 kilometres across but the roads into the cirques are slow and spectacular, and the coast road can jam. ⚠️ Swimming is restricted: after a series of shark attacks, bathing and surfing outside the lagoon and the supervised zones are banned by prefectoral order — stay inside the reef at L'Ermitage, Saint-Leu or Saint-Pierre.

In the cirques, accommodation is in mountain gîtes that must be booked ahead, especially for Mafate, which has no road; the tourist office runs the central booking. Eat cari (the Creole curry of chicken, fish or duck), rougail saucisses, samoussas and bouchons; drink the rum arrangé and the island's coffee. Local produce markets in Saint-Paul (Friday) and Saint-Pierre (Saturday) are the best introduction.

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