The Volcano Island — Piton de la Fournaise erupting into the sea, cirques cut from the sky, rougail saucisse in the mountain villages, and hiking trails that rank among the world's hardest and most beautiful
Réunion is a French overseas department and region — legally part of France and the European Union, using the euro, with the same social services as metropolitan France — set in the Indian Ocean 700 km east of Madagascar. The island's geography is the most dramatic of any French territory: Piton de la Fournaise, one of the world's most active volcanoes, erupts several times per year and has added dozens of square kilometers of new land to the island's southeast coast; three massive cirques (Mafate, Cilaos, Salazie) — ancient calderas eroded into near-vertical cliff-walled amphitheaters — are…
Réunion was uninhabited when Portuguese sailors discovered it around 1507, though Arab traders may have known it earlier. The French East India Company established the first permanent settlement in 1665, naming it Bourbon Island. As with the other Mascarene islands, the French brought enslaved Africans and Malagasy people to work coffee and sugarcane plantations — by the 18th century the island was one of France's most productive colonies. Coffee disease and competition from other producers destroyed the coffee industry, and sugarcane became dominant. Slavery was abolished in 1848, and indent…