I travel back and forth between Mauritius and La Réunion quite frequently and I've worked out now which seat you need to be in to get the best views of both islands. I can't tell you which one it is, otherwise next time I go to choose it you may already be sitting in it, but as I love taking photos out of plane windows (like Father, like Daughter!) I thought I'd show you what you're missing.
Mauritius is most famous for its beaches. It's almost entirely surrounded by coral reef, creating huge turquoise lagoons with calm water and lots of fishes. I love listening to people's excitement as they look out and see this for the first time:
On the Mauritius-Réunion trip, you fly along the south coast of Mauritius and approach Réunion from the north-east. I've talked before about Le Morne and the famous underwater waterfall illusion. I try to photograph that every time I go but haven't succeeded. I like this picture of the mountain though:
I recently came back to Mauritius after a trip home to visit my family. Flying in from Dubai you cross the island from north to south. I didn't have a window seat for this flight, but the Italian honeymooners next to me were so excited that I wasn't bothered. I was proud that they were so enthusiastic, I wanted to tell them that I live here, to claim credit for the beauty, like I somehow played a part in it. I then realised that, even if I knew how to say all that in Italian, they might think I was a little crazy, so I kept quiet.
I was once sitting on a plane next to an Iranian woman and we started talking about where we lived. She knew nothing about Mauritius, and asked if we have towns and buildings and stuff. I think she thought it was like one of the smaller Seychelles or Maldives islands where there's nothing but sand and posh hotels.
Of course we have sand and posh hotels, but we also have towns. The first picture is Port Louis, and the second is the central plateau where the towns of Beau-Bassin Rose Hill, Quatre Bornes, Vacoas-Phoenix, and Curepipe all kind of merge together. When the English were in charge, they decided that these places were the only ones which could be classed as towns, so everywhere else is a village, even Flacq and Mahebourg which are pretty big. The Mauritians, for some reason, haven't changed the rules in the last 50 years.
In the second photo, you can also see the mountains in the background which surround Port Louis. I was standing on one of them for the first photo. I've heard that Mauritius was created by the volcanic eruptions of the hot spot which is currently under La Réunion (Piton de la Fournaise volcano), and that these mountains form part of the collapsed crater of the volcano. I'm not sure that's true, but it sounds reasonable.
Aside from the beaches and towns, the rest of Mauritius is pretty green. There's still a lot of sugar cane, though some sugar manufacturers seem to be selling off a lot of land for building, and there are a lot of crop fields, particularly in the centre of the island. I don't have any photos of them though, because it's always cloudy and raining there. You can arrive from the north or west to glorious sunshine and beautiful coastline, but you have to pass through a giant cloud mass before emerging into the sunshine of the south where the airport is.
La Réunion couldn't be more different. The only coral reef is down a stretch of the west coast, meaning the rest of the island has rocky beaches leading directly into shark-infested open sea.
The towns are all along the coastline as the interior of the island is all mountain and volcano. Each town has "les hauts" and "les bas", separating the people who live on the slopes of the mountains, and those who live on the flatter land by the sea.
This is Saint Denis. It's not the capital because La Réunion isn't a country; it's the "chef lieu".
One day, when I win the lottery, I'm going to fly over La Réunion in a helicopter and take lots of photos of the volcano and the mountains. Until then, you'll have to Google them.
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