Trip 43 — Réunion Walk

Day 1: Airport to Bras-Panon
Tuesday, 29 October 2024

Today: 31529 steps/26.47 km/16.45 mi/4h 31m

I had a few hours in Paris on the way to Mauritius. Emerging from the RER tunnels, I found myself near the giant tubes of the Centre Pompidou. I turned right and was suddenly in a fantasy of whimsy. Candy-red lips were spitting water, a snake and an elephant were dancing, a mermaid gushed a pair of mammary streams. With what had JetBlue laced my thyme-soaked breakfast blueberries? I was expecting stately churches and grand museums and that romantic river and that iron tower, and now there was a technicolor ballet bobbing before me.

Had the Stravinsky Fountain been there before, and I'd forgotten it? My last time in Paris was seven years ago, on a similar layover, but I spent six weeks there in 2004, on tour with the "Fosse" musical. Since then, Paris has become much quieter. They seem to allow cars — and not too many of them — only on about every tenth road, so 90 percent of the inner city is a walker's bliss.

To keep things relevant with regard to Réunion, I walked over to the boundary between the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens. This is where the Tuileries Palace used to stand, until it was demolished in 1883 following an arson 12 years earlier.

The palace had been stormed by revolutionaries in 1792. A meeting ("réunion" in French) at which the attack was planned is said to have given Réunion Island its name. I took in the scene of buskers, painters, and strollers among the greenery and was thankful that disputes with the government are nowadays generally handled peacefully. I certainly wasn't watching a violent one on my phone while I waited for my early-release-from-quarantine Covid test after Abecedarian Walk #1 four Januaries ago.

Mauritius's main airport is, frustratingly, at the opposite end of the island from Port Louis. Despite Internet promises of 15-minute headways and precise 75-minute journeys (71 in the reverse direction), there did not seem to be direct buses from the airport bus stop to the capital. I took two buses and even then got only as far as Curepipe, where I was delighted to see, contrary to my expectations, that they had completed the light-rail line down to Port Louis.

Mauritius has influences from India, China, France, Britain, and mainland Africa. There are mosques, Hindu temples, and churches. My single dinner in Port Louis started with a cha siu bao (steamed pork bun) from one of the few Chinatown spots open on a Sunday. Farther east, at the Pakistan Hotel, I picked a roll and stuffed it with a meat cutlet and a couple of gateaux piments (chili fritters) and followed the tradition of tearing up the excess bread for the pigeons outside. Resisting some barbecued chicken from the adjoining alley, I headed back to the central waterfront area for a grilled dorade in a rich tomato creole sauce.

The sweet shop that Furcy owned for three years in the late 1830s was near the theatre, which had been built in 1822 and was, sadly, obscured by barriers for renovations on my visit. A few blocks away, on Corderie Street, was the Lorys' townhouse where Furcy worked while petitioning for his freedom. Today, Corderie is a busy, dusty affair straight out of Delhi (or maybe Jackson Heights), with sari and other garment shops.

At the foot of this activity, by the water, is the Intercontinental Slavery Museum. Furcy gets a nod as part of a display on the fate of escaped slaves. The end of slavery in Mauritius in 1835 (and 1848 in Réunion) didn't mean an instant easy life, of course. A system of apprenticeship kept people tied to plantations and families, and the Aapravasi Ghat immigration center, the remains of which are near the museum, welcomed almost half a million indentured laborers over the following century.

Arrivals spent two days at Aapravasi Ghat awaiting assignments to plantations and other work locations, generally for five- to ten-year contracts but sometimes as short as one year when there were many workers. They were easily taken advantage of, with late payments and unsanitary conditions — originally in thatched huts — despite occasional inspections. Indentured labor was hardly unique to Mauritius and Réunion; it brought many Chinese people to Cuba and Peru and many Javanese people to Suriname, for instance, and it still exists in places such as Dubai, which receives Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi laborers for construction projects.

I spent my second night on Mauritius in the seaside town of Mahebourg, for a different pace and to be close to the airport for my early Réunion flight. Sadly, I missed the last passenger train to Mahebourg by 68 years. What's left of the dilapidated station building is now taken over by the sprawling outdoor market, whose vendors attach and remove the protective coverings every morning and evening.

The waters at Mahebourg were the site of an important battle during the Napoleonic Wars in 1810. Here the French kept the British at bay, but four years later the island would become British and remain so until Mauritius's independence in 1968. The shore is now a peaceful area, with scattered little fishing boats and a few friendly dogs — friendly to each other, at least — puttering about in the water.

At Chez Marilyn, I asked for the whole-fish curry.

"Let me see if we have it," the server said. She returned from the kitchen a couple of minutes later.

"Yes, we have it."

"What kind of fish is it?"

"Let me check." She disappeared again.

She came back and said something that sounded like "gilpave."

"Can you spell it?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said. I didn't want her to make the trip again, and what did it matter if I was going to try a fish I'd never heard of?

While I waited, I typed "gilpave fish" into a Google search. It suggested "gefilte fish."

"No, that can't be it," I said into the air, laughing.

The curry was a rich sauce with dark flavors of coriander, cardamom, cloves, and a hint of anise. Before I left, I found someone to write down the name of the fish.

"Guelpavey," she wrote.

That string of letters doesn't appear anywhere on the Internet.

But back at my hotel, I tried separating it into two words and trying other spellings. And I found my way to "gueule pavée,” goldlined seabream. I'd never heard of that either, but by then it was time to sleep so I could be ready to fly to Réunion.

Unlike in Mauritius, the main airport in Réunion is close to the capital. But I won't get to Saint-Denis for another week. I'm rounding the island clockwise, first going down the eastern coast, past the towns of Sainte-Marie and Sainte-Suzanne, near where the Lorys had much of their land. Every town is named after a saint, and if it's not a saint, it's a bras, or a bois.

I left the airport by the eastern cargo area, not quite confident that it wouldn't dead-end and force me to turn back. But when I took the road uphill, I connected to a bike path that promised to take me all the way to Saint-André, almost to the end of today's journey. It was among the easiest walking mornings I've had.

"Total time: eight minutes, fifty-eight seconds," Helga announced of my first kilometer. (That was the name I gave her, wasn't it?)

I was skeptical. I'd been eager to get going — especially after losing time by being 12th in the immigration queue despite paying extra for seat 2F, which became moot when we boarded a bus to the terminal instead of using a jet bridge after getting off the plane, not that I'm at all upset by that, really — but I didn't think I was going that fast. It sometimes seemed that MapMyWalk gave me a little boost on my first kilometer of the day, that I got credit for a little extra distance as I started out.

But I was happy to be going quickly. Fortune recently published an article extolling the virtues not just of walking, but of walking fast. We should aim for 100 steps per minute, the scientists said. I counted and got to 128 per minute, which stayed pretty constant throughout the day. I don't know that that gets me much benefit beyond 100, but it meant that I soon reached the Bois Madame and was out of earshot of the busy N2 highway, approaching a sparkling sea and Sainte-Marie.

Opposite Sainte-Marie's bus station, a display showed the names and locations of 16 nearby shipwrecks. Then the bikeway climbed, becoming its own elevated track above the N2 junction, before passing a vanilla plantation and bringing me down to Sainte-Suzanne.

I paused for water and a snack of chicken-stuffed jalapeño peppers. Kids were hanging out by the store on a break from school. I wasn't sure where the bikeway went from here, but it was more prudent for me to take the main road inland toward Saint-André.

I reached the center of Saint-André at 1:43, which was the perfect time for me to start practicing the French for "It's too late for lunch?" They do not want to serve you a meal after 1:30 in Saint-André. You can get a sandwich or pizza, but all the signs outside enticing you with magret de canard and poisson créole are just going to leave you disappointed. I was lucky to find the Ramy food truck, which was shutting down for the day but whose proprietor, a native of Mauritius, sold me a box of noodles with chicken and egg.

I had a little over an hour to go before reaching Bras-Panon. I crossed over the Rivière du Mât and encountered the opposite experience to the lovely bikeway I'd enjoyed in the morning. Instead of an easy, safe place to walk, here was a narrow two-lane road with too-fast traffic and no shoulder. And I wasn't the only person who needed protection; there were bikers. Drivers gave way, slowing down or briefly stopping (what other option was there?), but this stretch deserves an update.

Maybe there's hope. A new protected lane appeared just before I reached my lodging in Bras-Panon — we shall see tomorrow how long it lasts.

Go on to day 2