Grand Étang (which means 'Big Pond') is Reunion's only high altitude volcanic lake and its largest inland body of water, with an area covering 50 hectares (123 acres).
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| Grand Etang, looking east |
Located in the district of
Saint-Benoît, it lies at an altitude of 525 metres at the bottom of an almost vertical ridge separating it from the
Rivière des Marsouins valley.
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| looking west |
You can walk or ride a horse around the lake, or just pic-nic there. The walk is about 4 km long, more if you take a detour to visit the waterfalls to the west. It's pretty easy but can be muddy depending on the time of year.
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| waterfalls, Grand Etang |
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| looking west from the start of the walk |
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| on the north shore looking west |
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path from carpark to lake
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| Reunion stonechat at Grand Etang (known locally as a tec-tec) |
One plant I've only ever seen growing at Grand Etang and nowhere else is wild
Job's-tears. The plant bears hard, pearly-white oval beads that can be used for making necklaces, rosaries and other objects.
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| Job's tears |
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| close-up of Job's tears |
Fed essentially by rainfall and runoff, the water level is very variable.
The water can reach up to 10 metres depth, but on the day we visited it was less than 1.9 metres deep at this measuring stick near the shore.
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| depth measurement instrument |
My husband remembers seeing pictures of Grand Etang after
Cyclone Hyacinthe ("the
wettest tropical cyclone on record in the world") in 1980 when the level of the water was so high it was more or less touching the electrical cables strung across the lake.
