‘Le temps se passe vite, hein?’ – LALALALA I can’t HEAR YOU !

   Yes, thank you wise older people, I know that time flies. But in this odd little limbo between paradise island and home-sweet-home, it’s nice to just forget about that. I’ve been flitting around here and there on various outings over the last few weeks, but there are still a few things on that list that need crossing off. So I’ll cross my fingers and hope I can do as much of it possible!
 
   ‘Ouais mais... c’est pas le paradis ici’ – You’re right, lady. What a sh*thole...

    And then we proceeded to jump off a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean to swim with bottlenose dolphins. That’s right – somebody actually slated La Réunion by saying it wasn’t a paradise island. This was a lady from Corsica who came with us on (my second) dolphin-swimming trip. Apparently this island is too chaotic, what with the (incredible) volcano and the (breathtakingly beautiful) mountains. I felt like donning a pineapple hat, a coconut bikini top and a grass skirt, whilst Maloya dancing and pointing to the incredible view we had from out at sea of the whole island, just to make a point. Might have thrown some samoussas fromages at her too, just for the jokes like.
  Anyway, so the dolphin trip second time around was, of course, cool. I wasn’t half as scared this time, as I had my own equipment and I knew how everything was going to work. Sadly, the only pod we could find was surrounded by a dozen or so tourist boats, so the experience didn’t feel quite as ‘natural’ as the last time. But still. Dolphins, about 2 metres in front of me. Sa-weet. We went on to go and practise free-diving, when the instructor said after being in the water for a good five minutes, ‘Oh yeah, these look like perfect conditions for sharks, we’d probably better get out’. But you know, I survived a jellyfish sting that day; I figured that luck was on our side.

La Chapelle  - An enlightening experience
     A huge canyon consisting of two 100m tall rock faces, La Chapelle was on my hit-list of things-to-do-before-I-leave-La-Réunion. Just look at the photo.
     On the way back we took a taxi from the bus station ... I saw a dude in a taxi playing some non-descript melodies on a little keyboard he’d propped up on the dashboard. I thought it would be fun to try out something a bit c-c-c-crazy so we went with him. He was a dance teacher, he said, who taught chacha and other ballroom styles. And he swerved along the entire journey. You err... you would have had to have been there.

‘Yeah,yeah, it’s like the BIGGEST festival in Reunion!’ – Sakifo 2012
     And wasn’t it just the moochiest goochiest baloochiest little ‘biggest’ festival you ever did see?  It was an adorable little event, had nothing on good old Godiva I have to say, but we enjoyed/endured a whole lotta Reunionese séga music (that’s reggae on amphetamines for those unaware). The highlight was Chinese Man, a slightly over-hyped but nonetheless fairly good electronic music group. Check ‘em out and ting.

Ahh Mafate. We’ll meet again!
     My fourth and probably final (for a while) time at Mafate was a delight. We basically did the same route as when I went for my birthday, but more chilled so we could just take in the views and camp in the valley of the Rivière des Galets. Though these gargantuan mountains don’t seem as ridiculous to me as when I was first exploring the island all those months ago, I still adore being right in there amongst the beauty of such untouched natural surroundings. I’m going to miss that a lot.

In other news ...

I am going to stay with a magician tomorrow as a couchsurfer. Cool.

Next stop ... Madagascar!
  Says it all, really. I probably won’t be able to update after that until I get home.

Ciao.