It had been a long time since I actually made an overnight trip to
Mafate; my last two trips to the
cirque were one-day trips to La Nouvelle with visitors, so I probably hadn't slept overnight in Mafate since 2014! But having an enforced staycation in
Reunion due to the COVID pandemic was the occasion to hike there with a group of friends. We started our expedition by taking a 4x4
taxi from Riviere des Galets to Deux Bras.
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| view further into Mafate from Deux Bras |
From Deux Bras we started a leisurely hike of ≈7 km and ≈500 metres of positive elevation up to our night's accommodation at Grand Place les Hauts, where we stayed at
Gite Pavillon. On the way there we crossed Bras D'Oussy river on a high bridge (more about Bras D'Oussy later).
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view from the Bras D'Oussy bridge
looking south-east towards the Gros Morne
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view from Bras D'Oussy bridge looking south-west towards Le Maido
(note the red roofs of Cayenne barely visible at the bottom left) |
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| cross by the side of the path on the way to Cayenne |
On the way we stopped just outside of the hamlet of
Cayenne for lunch.
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gaily decorated building at our lunch stop near Cayenne
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After lunch we passed by Grand Place primary school. It's one of eight schools in Mafate (the others are in La Nouvelle, Orangers, Roche Plate, Marla,
Aurère, îlet à Malheur, and îlet à Bourse). For secondary school education pupils from Mafate have to board on the coast.
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| Grand Place school |
Grand Place is overlooked by the distinctive pyramid-shaped Piton des Calumets which is 1616 metres high.
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nearly there; Piton des Calumets in the background
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We arrived at the gîte quite early and were able to rest and enjoy the view. Pavillon is quite practical because it has its own small grocery shop and there's even fresh bread - a rarety in Mafate.
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gîte Le Pavillon with Piton des Calumets benind
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looking north-west from behind the gîte
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| looking north from behind the gîte |
We should have been spending two nights in the same gîte, but there had been a mix-up and so the next morning we moved to another gîte about 20 minutes/1 km away called
Chez Marcel et Dominique Bilin.
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leaving gîte Le Pavillon
(buildings just visible in the centre of the photo)
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After dropping most of our stuff off, we then headed off to Roche Ancrée for a few hours. Located between Grand Place and Roche Plate, Roche Ancrée is a nice bathing spot, technically part of the
Rivière des Galets river. We headed down a very steep path to get there.
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| view on the way to Roche Ancrée |
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view halfway down the path to Roche Ancrée
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the bathing spot from above
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Some of us had a swim in the icy water before lunch and then dried off in the sun. To make a round trip of it we hiked through Cayenne to get back to Gîte Bilin.
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having a dip at Roche Ancrée
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looking north on the way from Roche Ancrée to Cayenne,
the hamlet is just visible to the right
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arriving at Cayenne
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(ficus?) tree roots by the pathside on the way to Cayenne
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| looking back (south) just before arriving at Cayenne |
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Cayenne church
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| a cross at Cayenne |
After our second and final night in Mafate we headed slowly down to Deux Bras, where we had to be by 4pm to get the taxi back to the town of Rivière des Galets. On the way back we stopped at
Gîte Bougainvilliers where there's a grocery, a postbox, and a statue of the
famous postman of Mafate.
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postbox at Gîte Bougainvilliers
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Ivrin Pausé was one of the postmen of Mafate from 1951 until 1991. He would leave the post office in La Possession every Monday morning and spend the next fours days hiking 120km on the trails to deliver letters. It's been calculated that during his 40 years of service he hiked a total of 253 000 kilomètres, i.e. 6 times the circumference of the earth. Another well-known postman in Mafate was Angelo Thiburce who was awarded the
Order of Merit by Jacques Chirac, but famously said he would have preferred that the government pay him a pair of shoes!
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statute of Ivrin Pausé, former postman of Mafate
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We then bypassed Cayenne (as we'd been there the day before) and crossed the Passerelle des Lataniers footbridge, before heading down to the level of Rivière des Galets.
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crossing Passerelle des Lataniers footbridge
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Once there it was time for a picnic lunch and a swim at Bras d'Oussy before heading back to Deux Bras for the 4x4 ride back to "civilisation". From our swimming spot we could see the bridge we'd crossed over the first day.
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swimming at Bras d'Oussy
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looking back into Mafate from Bras d'Oussy
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