Boucan Canot, Réunion - Polarsteps

Gîte du piton des Neiges - Piton de Neiges - Bassin des Cormorans - Boucan Canot Reunion Day 14 We had an alarm at 4:10 am since we were sharing a room, our alarm rang with the other 4 guys leaving at 3:30 am. Then you add, a terrible night of sleep, the tent was too warm and the mattress too uncomfortable. Anyway, we started the hike up at 4:15 am, no much breakfast but a muesli bar, good enough? To me, it seemed so, at first I feel as usual, tired, sleepless and difficult to walk up, soon I started to warm up and feel great, passing by some other hikers I seem to have reached a good pace. 1h 30min approx, we summit Piton des Neiges, 3070m above sea level, the highest peak in the Indian Ocean. The view can't get any better, 360 degrees of wild wonderful nature. That comes with a perk, strong freezing winds from the east. Combine with other hundreds of tourists, we had our coffee while seeing the sun rising over the horizon of clouds and said, shall we go down? So we did. Going down seemed easy, now 7km long with 1.7km descent wasn't as easy as we thought, my knees were complaining halfway through, too many steps. One way or another we arrived at the car and rapidly drove towards the coastline. We thought of visiting a waterfall, that was an epic fail, signs of closing at the entrance told us not to go, but we kept going, half an hour later we found the waterfall, not a single place to have a bath, and the wild walk down the river stream we had to hike up, not very pleasant. Then we had lunch and headed to the beach, the last beach, the last bath, a well-wanted shower. And OMG! Whales again, this time in the distance performing incredible jumps, until they decided to get so close I couldn't believe it. Four days in a row watching whales, remarkable. Sun faded over the ocean and we knew the trip had passed away with it. Drive back to the airport, dropped off the car, checked in luggage, and enjoy the last Dodo (beer) of the trip.