We flew from Muaritius into Roland Garros Airport. After passing through French immigration and customs, we just missed a bus, so we had an additional wait to get into the city of St Denis. We stayed at adequate but non-memorable Hotel Select in St Denis and had an equally non-memorable dinner on our first day. We had much of the following day to wander the streets of St Denis and search for an optical store that Sheila had found that sold folding reading glasses. We caught a bus out the city to Dos d'Âne where we started our hike of the GR 2.

We elected to skip the first northern section of the GR2 that started on the outskirts of St Denis. An 1800 metre hike through forest and then another half day walking without much in the way of views did not appeal to us when we could take the bus. So we caught a bus and stayed at a comfortable B&B in Dos d'Âne, which in English would be the back of a donkey (or a speed breaker), but we saw neither.

Dos d'Âne to Aurère (5hrs, descent 700m, ascent 700m). We were fortified by a French petit dejeuner (fresh bread, jam, pineapple, juice and coffee) and we found the trail without trouble. Down we went. Down to the Riviere des Galets, along it for a while and then up to Aurère. We encountered one other person on the GR 2 and later understood that the shorter but more popular GR 1 & GR 3 intersect the GR 2 in a number of places. Some of the people we met in Aurère had taken scheduled jeeps in from Le Port. In short there are many ways to trek in La Réunion.

Some of our first day experiences later became patterns. There is a lot of up and down in La Réunion. The gîtes don't open their doors until 3:30pm, so when you come across the village shop or bar, stop and have a drink. The meals were served at large communal tables and were mostly creole style rice and beans. Our fellow trekkers were almost entirely French. I'd be impolite to call them Parisian snobs, but we felt they were not inclusive. Having said that, most of the conversation seemed to be about food and that got a little tedious so we were content to be left out of the conversation.

There are no roads in the interior of the island, so small helicopters do much of the daily food resupply (including fresh bread). The Aurère gîte owner explained that she sometimes went into town on outgoing (empty) helicopters to purchase supplies and brought back supplies by jeep and then by mule thereafter (or was it that she carried it and felt like a mule?).

Aurère to Grand Place (4hrs, ascent 400m, descent 500m). Our second day on the trail was our easiest; a mere 4 hours with some nice views of central Réunion. When we approached Grand Place, we opted for the direct route to our lodging but we had failed to learn from the previous day that the gîttes don't open until 3:30. It was a warm day and shade was sparse. We had somehow missed the hamlet centre and, whatever it was, looked like it was a long way down from the gîtte. We didn't want to make an easy day into a hard day, so we stayed put.

The gîtte was well situated and the view from out front was Macchu Picchu-esque.

Grand Place to Roche Plate (5.5hrs, ascent 950m, descent 600m). Our third day was longer. We dropped down near the hamlet, and after an ascent, we descended an amazing trail down to our old friend, Riviere des Galets. There was a swimming hole begging for trekkers to go swimming in it, so we obliged. The heavy lifting followed as we climbed 900m over the next several hours and our destination of Roche Plate stubbornly kept its distance from us. When we reached the hamlet, we stopped in at the store. However, we would learn later in our stay that we missed another trick. We should have ordered bread from the shop ahead of time; the next morning the bread was all spoken for. So we purchased cans of tuna salad for lunch on our hike to Marla.

Roche Plate to Marla (6hrs, ascent 500m, descent 100m). We opted to follow the GR3 on the fourth day, mainly because it was a little shorter. We were reunited with Riviere des Galets before too long, went for another swim, then after following the river, made a steep climb up to Marla. The hamlet is at 1600m and is on all three of the GR routes, so it had more accommodation and a larger shop.

Marla to Cilaos (5.5hrs, ascent 550m, descent 1000m). Day 5 featured a fairly stiff climb up to Col de Taibit and then a long descent through beautiful forest finally reaching our first road since Dos d'Âne. We waited patiently for a bus that brought us into Cilaos, a creole town where we would spend two nights. We had booked a self-catering set-up at "Les Jardins Creoles". It was a bit of a hike into town but we enjoyed the day off.

Cilaos to Refuge Piton des Neiges (5.5hrs, ascent 1350m, descent 100m). Day 6 of walking (excluding our "rest day") sent us straight up a well constructed but relentless climb out of the ancient crater up onto the rim and the Refuge Piton des Neiges. It turned out to be a busy place. Most of the other visitors likely had come up the same way as us, and went down the same way, because the GR 2 south of the refuge was a quiet trail.

Refuge Piton des Neiges to Piton des Neiges (3.5hrs, ascent 600m, descent 600m). Alarms went off early that morning. It seemed that everyone else, but us, wanted to see the sunrise from the summit of Piton des Neiges. We rolled over and started out an hour later and still saw the sunrise. When we reached the summit area, it was a busy little place. Someone had a drone flying around which add to the carnival atmosphere. Piton des Neiges (3,070m), a dormant "shield volcano", is the highest peak on Réunion and the Indian Ocean. We could not see India from the summit.

Refuge Piton des Neiges to Bourg Murat (4.5hrs, ascent 100m, descent 950m). After reaching the summit, we all returned to the refuge and waited for petit dejeuner, emphasis on the petit. While most of the other visitors returned to Cilaos, we carried on south on the GR 2. We followed a crater rim and then dropped down to a wide valley and the N3 to catch a bus into Bourg Murat. It had been a number of hours, and we were almost at the highway when Sheila slipped and twisted her ankle. She hobbled to the highway where we hitched a ride into town and then took a taxi to the B&B that we had booked.

We spent an extra night at Bourg Murat and kept the ankle iced and elevated. The B&B was full the following night, so we opted for a taxi to the base of the southern volcano and a short walk to the Gîte de Piton de la Fournaise where we had a booking for 2 nights. Sheila hung out at the gîte while Glenn made a day trip up the volcano. Glenn met an Air France flight attendant who we later encountered on our return flight from Paris to Vancouver.

We stayed another day in Bourg Murat and arranged for a taxi to bring us to the hospital in St Pierre for an assessment of the ankle. An X-ray indicated there was no bone breakage. We stayed at pre-booked self-catering "Tiz Cat Cool d"Heures" in St Pierre on our last night in Réunion. Glenn made a return visit to a pharmacy near the hospital to exchange an ankle brace (wrong foot). Sheila hobbled to a bus stop on our last day and we took a "car jaune" to the airport for our return to Mauritius.