Piton de Neiges (Peak of Snow- although there hasn't been snow there in years)

1:55pm, my desk. le 17 mai. One week ago, I was making some supper in the communal sixieme etage (6th floor) kitchen, making small talk with my neighbor, Flo. He said he was doing Piton de Neiges this week. I expressed excitedness for him; Piton de Neiges is the highest peak in the Indian Ocean at 3,070 meters (about 10,069 feet) and takes a solid bit of gumption and time to conquer. I told him I had not yet done it, but planned on it before I left (read: I was too lazy to organize the trip myself, but because most students claimed its views to be totally worth it, I wanted to go, but was losing interest). About three minutes later, Anjte, another neighbor said she had heard I was interested and that a spot in the gite had opened up in their group and would I like to come, because they would be leaving promptly at 7:05 am. The next morning. And so, that’s how the hardest hike of my life fell into my lap. So, after three hours switching buses that wound through tiny coastal towns and finally into Cirque de Salazie, we found ourselves in the tiny Creole village of Hellbourg (named after Monsieur Hell, an early explorer). We followed the directions (walk to the end of the main street, go left, and start scaling the walls of a giant collapsed volcano). I won’t lie that the hike was HARD. Our group of three Germans (Flo, Anjte, and Isabel), two Norwegians (Mari and Weslemøy) and I faced several hours of straight climbing. We chose the longer, but more scenic and gradual ascent. It paid off. We went through breezy jungly stuff (through which Weslemøy and I ate our weight in goyaviers) to a jungle of tall trees that made me feel like I was in California. The ground was spongy, and the air was moist, and the air was so undeniably fresh. Here, the kind of plants changed rapidly, like any rise in altitude in Reunion. I tried to memorize everything; the shape of the leaves, the color of the blooms, the consistency of the soil, and the smell of oxygen. Once again, I was thankful for my hiking boots on the slippery logs and rocks and roots. I kept thinking about my botany professor back at Maryville, and how he would have probably felt like a kid in a candy shop. After the forest we reached the wall that contains Salazie and makes it into a bowl shape, and we climbed stairs for hours. Hours. Long hours. Mini Reunion geography lesson: Piton de Neiges is an extinct volcano (since about 20,000 years ago) that dominates over the three cirques of the island (Cilaos, Mafate, and Salazie). If you google image search for Reunion, you’ll notice three crater-like bowls (the cirques) in the middle of the island and Piton de Neiges is the peak where all three meet. So, at the top, I could see all three cirques which was pretty impressive. Back to the adventure. Amazingly, we had reached the top of Salazie’s cirque walls, but couldn’t see anything because we were in/above the clouds. That was neat. It’s a very mystical thing and made me want to write poetry. I didn’t. I thought I’d stumble upon Mr. Tumnus, or something. I didn’t. At this elevation, it’s considerably cooler and windier. Our different paces had lumped us into natural groups of two, and Weslemøy (I still can’t say her name; my mouth cannot make Norwegian phonemes) and I were getting frustrated with the remaining time we had until we reached the gite, our destination for the night. Our mantra became “nous sommes presque là” (we’re almost there!) and repeated it through kilometers of head-high, scrubby heather bushes and a path of Arizona-red volcanic rocks. Finally, around 6pm, we found salvation at the gite (like a hostel for hikers- with beds, blankets, sometimes showers, and hot meals). It was amazing. After everyone made it in, we enjoyed a cup of hot tea and went to bed around 7:30pm. Not kidding. The special thing about Piton de Neiges is that the sunrise is reportedly one of the best you can see. And, since the gite is about 500 meters below the summit, hikers make a neat sight, rising at 3:30am or so to hike, like a fluorescent caterpillar, enduring the remaining two (very intense) hours to make the summit in time for the sunrise. It was really cold and sort of surreal to be wearing all of my layers on a tropical island, but the hour or so we spent oohing and aaahing and whoaaaing over the colors and clouds and view was quite unbelievable. I think it may have been the coolest thing I’ve done here. If there aren’t clouds, you can reportedly see Mauritius, the small island nation that lies just 137 miles to the slight northeast. Even though we didn’t get that privilege, it was a spectacle, nonetheless. After a petit repose at the gite, we descended through Cilaos. Once, when we got a little closer to the bottom, I saw what I honestly thought was a black bear- it turned out to be an ENORMOUS black dog. Since I’m used to hiking in the Smokies, I had legitimate cause for concern, but my European friends just laughed at my little gasp of surprise and full stop I made in the middle of the trail. A few hours and buses later we returned back home to St. Denis, tired, smelly, but oh so fulfilled. The rest of my pictures are on Facebook.
Countdown: 17 days until Paris!