Up early and headed off by 8:30am towards Cilaos, the main village in the third of Reunion's cirques. Although only 70km from our hotel, it took 3 hours to get there due to the extremely twisty road and the altitude gain (from sea level to 1,214m). The road turns over 400 times, with many blind corners and one way stretches including through tunnels and over bridges. Both the car and myself were happy to arrive and I'm sure Jeff was happy to have a break from me saying "slow down". He did a very good job and thank god there was a wall all along this road and not just an edge like on the way to Hellbourg!

We stopped a few times for photos and a break on the way up . This day the weather gods were feeling kind and it didn't rain at all the whole day.

The town of Cilaos was larger than we expected and full of super cute Creole style houses with their contrasting trim and shutters. There was also a market on which was pretty cool with lots of local produce and crafty things for sale. Quite a few friendly kittehs around too including a talkative Siamese that took a shine to Jeff. Also more of those massive spiders. Ugh.

Didn't do any walks in the forest as the woman at the tourist office said they were not safe due to rain. I wasn't overly upset as wasn't eager to do another 3hr hike like yesterday but it would have been nice to go for a little hike. Jeff meanwhile was inconsolable and kept looking wistfully at the mountains. I think he will have to come back by himself one day and go nuts aka Bear Grills.

So we looked around, took photos, patted kittehs and then had a nice Creole lunch at one of the quaint restaurants . Boy do they love lentils here! Every Creole meal we've had has had lentils and rice with it. We checked out a supermarket the other day and there was an entire aisle of different canned lentils. Followed by an entire aisle of canned sausage and beans!

Truth be told it's a little worrying having Jeff eat this many lentils.

Anyway...while paying for our lunch the owner worked out we were Australian and became super friendly and chatty, even giving us a complimentary shot of rum with orange. And it was very nice too.

Had some more snacks of homemade icecream and a type of macaroon biscuit then drove up to the Roche-Merveilleuse lookout point for another birds eye view over Cilaos and the mountains of the cirque.

It's extremely pretty country up here but we can't help but wonder what everyone does who lives here. You couldn't commute with that road - although having said that, amazingly the bus comes out here! And not a mini one mind you, a big whoppious normal sized Transperth length bus. Insane. We were very happy not to have met one of those on a blind corner!

Headed for home just after 3pm as very leery of driving this road in the dark. Not surprisingly the trip down took a lot less time than the trip up!

Once down on the flat we annoyed our gps by avoiding the main highway and driving back along the ocean instead. Lots of good swell along the coast and I can see why surfers are lured in to catch some waves but the chompys cruising outside the reef would still deter me!

Back home and flopped. Both a little tired tonight and have an early start again tomorrow. Ordered some room service and watched some tv then off to the land of nod