Day 65 of 111 (3/27/19) – Day 1 of 3 at sea from Reunion Island to Durban, South Africa

March 26, 2019

Day 63 – Mauritius – Two dives. Dove on another sunken ship and saw a large moray eel slithering along the deck of the ship. He was probably about 6 feet long and swam about 50 feet along the deck until disappearing into a hole in the deck. Creepy and beautiful at the same time. It is wild to look at all the holes and ports of a sunken ship and see inside a dark and mysterious world inhabited by all kinds of interesting creatures. These sunken ships attract all kinds of coral growth and then millions of creatures populate surroundings.

Day 64 – Wonderful Island bus tour of Reunion Island into the interior of this beautiful volcanic island. We passed an engineering marvel, a 7-mile long elevated highway suspended over the coastline. This construction was necessitated because the sheer and crumbling cliffs kept closing the current road because of falling rock. The massive project, costing 4 billion dollars, is supposed to be done in 2020 and will be a toll road. The aforementioned cliffs were some of the steepest, lushest cliffs I have ever seen and we drove the winding roads into the caldera of the inactive parts of the volcanic island. Our fantastic tour guide was an ex-pilot from Madagascar airlines. He showed us some pictures from a volcanic eruption just two weeks before we arrived that he had taken from a helicopter and from the shore. The tour took us to the bridal veil falls and our great lunch overlooked this tropical paradise. Four daily flights from Paris bring thousands of tourists to this amazing place with over 860,000 inhabitants. We also stopped at a vanilla plantation that had been family-run for 5 generations. Along with one of the best tours ever, they served us white rum liberally and everyone was much more talkative when boarding the tour bus.