Reunion Island: Paragliding in the Indian Ocean

Article and photos by Steve Roti

Do you know where Reunion Island is? No? Well, if you start in South Africa and head east-northeast into the Indian Ocean the first island you'll come to is Madagascar. Keep going east and the next one is Ile de la Reunion, about 500 miles past Madagascar. Reunion Island, as it's known to English-speakers, is an overseas department of France. It attracts close to half a million visitors each year, the vast majority of them French. Although few American paraglider pilots have heard of Reunion, our French counterparts know all about it and they flock to the island in large numbers. Quite a few paragliding competitions have been held there in the past few years.

There are some similarities between Reunion Island and the Hawaiian Islands: both are volcanic and the weather on both is strongly influenced by trade winds. Reunion's 30 mile by 30 mile area contains three craters approximately 9,000' tall, as well as a smaller volcano that was active as recently as 1992. The seasons are reversed from the northern hemisphere: summer from October to March is hot and wet and can bring cyclones, and winter from April to September is cooler and drier.

I travelled to Reunion Island in late March 1999 with Bruce Mortimer, Harry Kauffman and Tina Pavelic, as well as two South African pilots named Shirley Carter and Rick Brimson. A day later we were joined by Ben and LE Herrick from Washington DC, and Lizette Preiss from Dublin, Ireland. Our goal: to visit the local flying sites and find out if the paragliding there is really as good as we had been told. We ended up paragliding eight out of the ten days we were on the island, at three different flying sites. All three sites are on the west side of the island in the lee of the trade winds, where thermals and seabreeze and convergence combine to produce consistently soarable conditions.

Les Colimacons

The most-used flying site on the island is Les Colimacons, with a launch located at 2400'msl on the lower flanks of one of the volcanoes. The launch area is a shallow carpeted hillside located in the middle of sugarcane fields. Here's a picture of Tina launching at Les Colimacons. Wind was typically light at launch, requiring forward inflations and aggressive runs to get airborne before reaching the end of the cleared area. Once in the air, the usual flight plan was to fly straight out over the village below launch where the terrain got a little steeper and find a thermal there. Here's a picture of Bruce and Ben thermaling over the lower slopes of the volcano. When we made it up to cloudbase (which we did most days) we would fly back to launch. Here's a picture of Harry above Les Colimacons launch. The soarable window usually started around 10am or 11am and extended until the wind picked up in the LZ as the trade winds wrapped around to the west side of the island. The standard landing zone for Les Colimacons is in a field next to the beach. Here's a picture of Harry landing in the LZ.

Cloudbase was typically around 3,000'msl during the time we were there, and some days the cumulus clouds would extend all the way from the volcano to the beach making it possible to get high and fly out over the ocean. Here's a picture of Tina flying over the ocean, with a view back toward the volcano. On particularly good days, the southeast trade winds wrap around the top and bottom of the island and meet to form convergence zones on the west side that extend out over the ocean, marked by lines of clouds like cloudstreets. When this happens it's possible to fly even further out over the ocean. One day I got up to cloudbase above the shoreline and flew straight out to sea for five minutes in zero sink the whole time. At that point (about a mile from land) I chickened out and flew back to the coast, then I meandered up and down the coast for quite a while. Here are pictures taken while I was flying south along the coast toward St-Leu and flying north along the coast toward St-Gilles-les-Bains. The amazing Reunion lee-side convergence was described in detail by Bruce Goldsmith in Cross Country magazine two years ago, and it truly makes the island a unique place to fly.

There is a lot of tandem paragliding activity at Les Colimacons -- I saw five to ten tandem pilots flying almost every day. The tandem trade was so organized that there was a full-time photographer in the LZ taking pictures of each tandem landing with a digital camera. Then his assistant printed pictures on the spot for the passengers. To give you an idea how consistent this flying site is, one of the pilots told me that he averages 700 tandem flights per year at Les Colimacons. An interesting side note is that the tandem pilots we saw didn't carry reserve parachutes (most of the local solo pilots flew sans reserve as well). It's a different approach to paragliding than here in the U.S., perhaps due to the generally high experience level of the pilots and the user-friendliness of the flying site.

Dos d'Ane

The second flying site we visited was Dos d'Ane, with a launch perched high above a large valley named Riviere des Galets. In front of launch the valley widens and eventually runs into the ocean, behind launch the valley narrows and leads into one of the big volcanic craters. To Pacific Northwest pilots, Dos d'Ane looks a little bit like a tropical version of the Toutle River valley near Mount St. Helens. Here's a picture of Lizette talking to a French pilot on the Dos d'Ane launch, while two pilots search for lift along the spine in front of launch.

Just like Les Colimacons, Dos d'Ane is a thermal site. The day I flew there it became soarable by 10am, and most of our group was able to get up above launch. Here's a picture of LE thermaling over the Dos d'Ane launch. Four of us climbed up to cloudbase (again around 3000'msl) and crossed the valley to the south side. Here's a picture taken while I was crossing the valley, looking up valley toward the Cirque de Mafate crater. As expected we found thermals galore on the other side, and I snapped a picture of Ben thermaling up over the north-facing slopes. The little specks down by the valley walls are French paraglider pilots. After an hour in the air we headed out toward the Riviere des Galets LZ, located in the lower part of the valley where it widens out.

Le Maido

For a completely different paragliding experience there's the awesome spectacle of flying from Le Maido, a 6000'msl viewpoint looking into the giant Cirque de Mafate crater. If Dos d'Ane is like flying in the Toutle River valley, Le Maido is like launching from the rim of Mount St. Helens into the crater, then flying across the crater and out the opening in the crater wall created by the blast. It's a cliff launch, with thousands of feet of altitude under your feet as you step over the edge so you'd better be sure your glider is over your head and flying at that point.

We got there early in the morning and launched as soon as possible to avoid possible complications of valley wind and cloud development. Here's a picture I took in flight looking back at Le Maido launch on top of the cliff. Believe it or not, there are people living inside the crater a long way from the nearest paved road. Here's a picture looking down on a village inside the Cirque de Mafate crater. After flying out of the crater into the Riviere des Galets valley I landed near the Dos d'Ane flying site. It was a sled ride, but a spectacularly beautiful one that was well worth the half hour hike to launch.

Reunion in Retrospect

In addition to being a superb place to fly paragliders, Reunion Island has plenty of other attractions. Almost every day after flying we went to the beach for swimming and snorkelling. Many of the beaches are protected by reefs, making for easy swimming, and the water is full of colorful fish and coral. The beach next to the Les Colimacons LZ had a north-to-south current running along it so we would walk to the north end of the beach, jump in with our goggles and float to the south end, taking in the underwater scenery without having to exert ourselves.

Visiting Reunion Island is not an inexpensive proposition. Round-trip airfares from Paris were going for about US$600 when we were there, while food, lodging and car rental prices were comparable to what you'd pay in Europe. We dealt with the high prices by renting a "self-catering" apartment and cooking our own meals. Our apartment was in St-Gilles-les-Bains, about a half hour drive from the Les Colimacons LZ. The best deal was the paragliding shuttle bus that takes pilots from the Les Colimacons LZ to launch for US$5 per person, or US$6 for a ride to the high launch at 3400'msl. We had to provide our own transportation to launch at Dos d'Ane and Le Maido.

I was quite impressed with the quality and consistency of the paragliding on Reunion. I'd rate it right up there with the French Alps as one of my favorite overseas flying destinations. When it came time to leave at the end of our visit, Tina and I went for a walk on the beach to see our last sunset on the island. I didn't use any filters when I took that photo, the sky really looked that color, as if to remind us of our golden days spent in the air over Reunion Island.

Postscript

The April/May 1999 issue of Cross Country magazine has an excellent article about Reunion Island written by South African pilot Greg Hamerton. If you don't subscribe to Cross Country, you should sign up now. Visit the Cross Country Web site.