My mum had cooked, we ate a delicious "rougail saucisses", (dish made with smoked local sausages in a tomato sauce) the must in the Réunion cuisine, it certainly tasted better than the one we had in Mauritius, I am byest ...
And we slept soundly in a very hot room, after all Réunion is a tropical island.
The next day we woke up, I actually wake up very early, and enjoyed my mother's coffee whilst looking at the sun shining in all its glory over the mountains in the east, splashing the sugar cane field with a giant yellow brush. The choice was easy we decided to go to the seaside, which is only a 10 minutes drive from my mother's house. The sea was amazingly inviting, the beach was not that busy.
In those first ten days, we probably ended up going to the seaside twice a day, and we loved it.
As the days went by during this first week, we made a few purchases in the local supermarket like a electrical fan and a BBQ. We were enjoying the farmers' market and the array of fresh produce was making my heart sing. I like cooking and being able to choose my exotic vegetable and fruits was a real pleasure. This was going to be a memorable holiday.
Never before had my husband been able to relax for a full 4 weeks, no emails to check and no phone calls from colleagues from around the world. This was the first time we had been away on a break when he really did not work.
We entered into a routine of beach, food, visits to relatives, drives to do some sightseeing. We like this beach called Grand Anse
and we would take a picnic and spend the day, lazily watching the waves crashing, we would do a lot of people watching. Collect seashells and watch the local birds. What more could we ask ?
On the days without picnic, we would stop and have a bite to eat at a local restaurant, this particular little place had a speciality: One must eat a palm heart salad when in Réunion, which we did many times. This one was particularly nice.
We had planned to spend a week in a cottage right by the sea on the west coast, a favourite with tourists, because of the sunsets and the glimpse of whales in the horizon.
News on French television and other English channels such as CNN and Al Jazeerah were reporting cases in Europe, mainly in Italy, still we were miles away and not feeling concerned. Are they not making a meal out of bad news as per usual and is this not like every winter a flu strand that will quickly go away with the better weather on the way ? I am an optimistic person most of the time I did not feel alarmed.
My mother had a few little jobs she wanted my husband to do, but there was no rush. We were making the most of the hot days and the beach.
We were invited by my relatives to share meals with them, as is the custom, we were enjoying each others' company, laughing, making jokes, me translating a lot of the time from French into English to my husband. It all seemed so easy...
