We awoke at 7am to find our roommate had already left. This was good. It allowed us to rummage through our luggage and sort out the oily mess without worrying about disturbing him. And what a mess it was! We could not believe that neither of us noticed that the bottle had a stopper and not a screw-top.
We managed to put all the oil-soaked clothing into plastic bags in an effort to prevent further contamination. My travel clothes, and especially my new black down jacket, were most affected. At least vanilla smells pleasant…
There was an espresso machine at breakfast and a larger variety of food than usual to choose from, including a really good yogurt. This certainly perked us up.
Pas de Bellecombe is a mountain pass which takes you to the ‘entrance’ of the volcanic area at 2319m. It overlooks Enclos Fouqué, the last caldera formed by Piton de la Fournaise (meaning ‘Peak of the Furnace’), the active volcano on the eastern side of the island. It also offers a good view of a small crater called Formica Leo.
Neither of us were very enthusiastic about walking much so we decided that we would go to the lookout point and not all the way to the crater.
After our walk we had a delicious traditional pork cari for lunch before our Connections transfer arrived at 2pm, promptly as always.
We got to the Alamanda Hotel in L’Ermitage in the late afternoon where we once again rearranged our luggage, this time in order to be ready for the flight back home. The room smelled of vanilla.
Roger had misgivings about getting to the airport in time. We would be travelling along the same road as when we started the hike and the morning traffic was hectic. Well, there is nothing we could do about it besides accept that Connections have done this before and that their timing was based on experience.
We were in bed early’ish. It was good to be horizontal.
My Fitbit showed 63 flights of steps and 9,72km distance for this, our last day.
