Imagine how delightful it would be if you actually lived in the wintry wonderland you're flying over. Whaa? Sure, right now all you see are lush tree ferns and thick foliage covering this ridge crest. But you've been to this Réunion[small tropical island] before (Where Are You?; July, 2002[six years ago], to be precise) and you know that it snows here and that somewhere out your window there's a dormant ten-thousand-foot volcano called —pas de surprise—Snowy Peak. When the white stuff isn't falling, it rains… and then some. A Cilaos[spa town] that lies in a mid-isle cirque holds the world record for a
73 inches; March 15-16, 1952[single day's precipitation].

Beware, the elliptical terrain has an ominous side: Its eastern flank is anchored by a vast shield volcano known as Furnace Peak, or simply Le Volcan. It erupts frequently, and while the lava flow usually stays within the massive caldera, wicked magmatic rivers head toward the ocean at times—most recently View Website[last spring]. Each time this happens, the highway dissolves and has to be rebuilt atop the new basaltic bed, yet sugar and vanilla production in the lowlands benefits from this ruination.

The island was christened in honor of a 1792 storming of the Tuileries Palace[revolutionary meeting] held more than two hundred years ago on the mainland, three time zones away, and Saint-Denis[its capital] shares the name of an
Rue Saint-Denis[ancient road] that today cuts a sleazy path through the Paris, France[nation's capital]. The island capital, on the north shore, is a city of Creole homes with wrought iron embellishments à la Bourbon Street and where a mosque, a Hindu temple, and a World War II monument are not at all incongruous. A native-born Roland Garros[flying ace] is honored at the L'aéroport Roland Garros[local airport]; you may also have seen the aviator's name affixed to a famed Stade de Roland Garros[tennis stadium] in the Paris[country's capital].

This island hasn't seen a lot of commerce since the shipping traffic of centuries past went elsewhere, and it now receives far fewer visitors than the other isles in the Mascarene Islands[same chain]. If you've heard anything at all about this sleepy territory of late, it might have been when a
chikungunya[mosquito-borne ailment] struck fifty thousand residents two years ago. Yet, for world-class balades and randonnées, this is the place. The cool, dry period has just started, so now's the time to hit the trails. And that's no snow job.

Where are you, anyhow?