Here comes the rain again

I know I talked about the rain not that long ago, but I still have more to say. It must be my Britishness coming out, or maybe it's just because there's so much of the stuff here and it impacts more than just my choice of shoes.

In Réunion, some roads have what they call a "radier" (I don't know how to say this in English, any suggestions welcome!) The road crosses a ravine which is dry for most of the year. In the wet season, after a heavy downpour, the river crosses the road, making it temporarily inaccessible. There's a radier in the town where my Mother-in-Law lives, but I had never seen it "in action" until last week.

 

Despite the warning signs and the giant red and white barrier, we did see a man pedal across on his bicycle with a typical French disregard for the rules. I was told that the people of the town know when it's safe to cross and it saves them taking a huge detour on the "quatre voies" main road.

There's been talk for a long time about building a bridge here as the closure of the radier causes huge traffic jams in the town. I don't know whether they'll ever actually get around to it though. It rained non-stop for several days and the road was closed for about a week while I was there.

Back in Mauritius, you can judge how heavily it has been raining by the price of tomatoes. Unlike in Europe, tomatoes are rarely grown in greenhouses here, so the fragile plants suffer a lot when it starts to rain. Generally we pay between 40-60 rupees (According to the internet, 40 rupees is currently worth 78p) for half a kilo of nice, local tomatoes; this morning the cheapest ones I could find were 120 rupees. I decided not to buy any at that price, so tonight we'll be eating homemade green papaya salad with our roast chicken.

When you have nowhere to go, watching rain like this is pretty impressive:

 

The roof of our house, like many Mauritian houses, is flat. Our landlady is planning to build another floor one day, but for the moment it is where we hang our washing, and where the water tank and solar water heater live. Unfortunately, the builder made an elementary mistake - the roof is totally flat, without a slope to allow rainwater to drain away, so when I went upstairs yesterday, I realised that we now have a lake above our heads.

 

It was pretty in the evening though with the reflection of the sunset...

The weather forecast here is not very helpful; in fact it's more like a summary of the day's weather than a prediction for the next day. I thought we would be better off just looking out of the window and deciding for ourselves, but I learned today that that isn't always a good plan either. We left home in blazing sunshine this morning, but by the time we reached the main road, you could hardly see out of the windscreen. Instead of the water crossing the road like at the radier, it was flowing down the middle like a river. I just hope it's going to calm down a bit this week as we have places to go and people to see, and we're doing it all by bus because our car is poorly.

How do you do an anti-rain dance?

 

 

The Bluest Bay of all

Blue Bay, as its name suggests, is pretty blue. This is what it looks like from above :

I previously posted about Le Morne Brabant being one of my two favourite places in Mauritius, and this is the other one. Despite its proximity to the airport, Blue Bay isn't particularly touristy and, on a normal day, the beach is pretty empty.

If you make the mistake of going there on a public holiday though, the view is rather different...

Blue Bay is a protected marine park, a status given because it is home to the biggest brain coral in the Indian Ocean, and one of the five biggest in the world if I remember correctly from our tour. Boating, fishing and swimming are all restricted - boat tours are allowed but there are designated points where they are allowed to drop anchor for snorkelling, and there are places they are not permitted to go depending on the tide.

I've been on the glass bottomed boat tour of the park four times now and I never get tired of it. The first time we went, the boat went directly to the snorkelling point and stayed there for an hour, but the other times, with a different company, we've had a proper tour of the park where they explain about the different types of coral, the fish, the efforts to regenerate coral growth after cyclone damage, and all sorts of other interesting information. As they know us now, they make an effort to try and show us something new each time. On our last visit it was this impressive rock full of clam shells (bénitier):

I'm told if you get your foot stuck in one of them, you'll never get it out again...

The park also contains approximately 38 different species of coral. It's an impressive sight, even for people who don't like to snorkel. The water is so clear that you almost get a better view from the glass bottomed boat.

I can't take the credit for this amazing picture, my friend Franck took it with my underwater camera.

Once you've seen the coral, it's time to meet the fish. If you're lucky, you might be the only people there, and it really is like swimming in an aquarium, it's incredible, especially considering you're still so close to the beach.

When my parents visited at the end of last year, I spent a week telling them how beautiful Blue Bay was, raving about the clear water and the fish. Sadly though, the day we took them there a bad weather system was just on its way out, and the sea was green and choppy. The boat tours were all cancelled, and you couldn't even see the bottom when you were standing waist-high in the water. I was so disappointed. I'd never seen it like that. Luckily though, we booked a boat trip for the last day of their holiday and by then it was back to normal. My Dad took this picture, and it's not even photoshopped, I promise!

Home sweet island home

After more than two months away visiting friends and family, I feared the worst when I finally got back to Mauritius yesterday. Some people worry about flooding or burglaries; for me it was cockroach infestations, ant colonies and dead lizards. I actually got off pretty lightly I think, apart from the 10 tons of lizard poo. So far, I've only found one dead cockroach, a couple of dead wasps, and a few spiders. I've spent the majority of today scraping stinky lizard poo off walls, skirting boards and work surfaces. People told me I should appreciate lizards for their mosquito-killing capacities, but to be honest, I'd rather just buy some repellent and risk the occasional bite. Don't worry, no photos of poo.

A quick tour of the garden has revealed some interesting changes. The birds have come back and built a new nest behind one of our air-con units. I think one of them must have flown pretty hard into our kitchen window because there's a crack in it now, and I can't think how else it might have got there.

Remember the papaya tree that was saved from destruction when we saw there was some fruit growing on it? Well, it's now as tall as my house. 

I think this is what my landlady was afraid of. I'm going to try and appease her with some of these when they're ripe:

The biggest surprise of all is that the calebasse is back, again! It really is indestructible. I'm going to be much less sentimental about it this time.

When I arrived home yesterday, I opened the freezer to check what we had in, and was touched to see that Merv had prepared some meals for me to eat while he was away.

Touched, until I looked more closely and realised that it's actually 10 portions of gratin made from the last calebasse! There's still one in the cupboard too. Be warned, if you come for dinner anytime soon, that's what you'll be eating.

Season switching

It’s been a while. I can’t believe it’s already February. The reason I haven’t written on the blog for so long is that I spent a lot of January travelling. Aside from the limited internet time, it was kind of hard to get inspired to write about life on a tropical island when I was huddled under a blanket on the sofa, turning on the lights at 4pm when it got dark and turning the thermostat up to a toasty 17°c; hard to imagine a time when I set the air conditioning to cool me down to 26°c!

After two months of being surrounded by family and friends, I wasn’t keen on going back to an empty house in Mauritius, so I decided to add an extra flight to my journey and come directly to see my Belle Famille in Réunion. The people at the airport did look at me a little strangely when I came out wearing jeans, jumper and trainers, with a big coat over my arm! 

I landed right in the middle of the tropical summer season so it’s warm, hot even, but with a lot of wind and even more rain. We keep having those intense downpours that only last a few minutes but leave you feeling like you just got out of the shower. And to all those people thinking “Well, at least it’s warm rain”, that’s true, but I find it much worse to have wet feet sliding around in sandals, than warm, dry feet in a nice pair of boots! 

Summer in the tropics is also cyclone season but I’m hoping they’ll keep their distance this year. There are some aspects of island life that I’m happy to remain ignorant about.