Confusingly there are two places in
Reunion called Roche Plate: one is a small village in
Mafate (the
cirque only accessible on foot), and the other is a tiny hamlet in the river valley of
Rivière des Remparts.
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map showing hike route in bright green
(Nez de Boeuf at the top, Roche Plate at the bottom) |
The second Roche Plate is only accessible by 4WD vehicle or on foot, and in the latter case it's either a long but easy walk from the
coast, or a tough hike down from Nez de Boeuf near the
volcano. We chose the tough option!
It's a hike that I'd already done in the early 2000s, but only hiking up, never down. This time we were going to be trekking down and then back up the next day.
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| looking at the very top end of Riviere des Remparts from hike starting point |
As you can see from the sign below, the hike begins at an altitude of 2070 metres from a place technically known as "Haut de la Riviere des Remparts". Nez de Boeuf (which literally means 'Ox Nose' and was possibly named due to its shape) is a well-known viewpoint on the road that leads to the volcano, and is actually at an elevation 2136 metres but the hike starting point is 1.5 km further along the road.
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| starting point of the hike Nez de Boeuf to Roche Plate |
The sign says that only 3 hours are needed for the hike down, but it actually took us a bit longer, albeit including breaks. The distance is 9.5 km but the altitude difference is 1400m - quite steep, especially at the part nearest Nez de Boeuf!
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| thick forest during the first part of the hike |
After a while the vegetation thins out and although the weather was cloudy (and sometimes drizzly), at the half-way point we got this view of the river valley. You can clearly see the (seemingly) flat river bed surrounded by the high cliff walls (cf. the name of the river: remparts)
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| view looking south from ≈half-way point |
To give you an idea of what most of the hiking path looked like, here's a view taken from the same location and looking back up the way we'd came.
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| Riviere des Remparts hiking path |
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| pathside wildflowers |
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| path nearing gîte |
Having set off late morning, we reached our accommodation for the night (one of several gîtes there) in the afternoon and joined the rest of our party (some had come up by 4WD, others had hiked up from the coast). It started raining during the night and the next morning we set off in the rain but it didn't take us any longer to hike up than down the previous day, and by the time we were back at the volcano road and had reached our cars we had a cloudless blue sky.
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| Piton des Neiges seen from hike endpoint on arriving back |
Bonus:
As we were doing this hike early June it was still
goyavier (
strawberry guava) season, and on the hike back up we picked lots of the fruit.
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