Amanda Gannon, a reader from Sandyford, in Dublin, had the holiday of a lifetime after swapping houses with a couple on France's tropical Indian Ocean island of Réunion
TOWARDS THE END of the summer of 2008 a friend mentioned that she had just house-swapped with a family in Florida. It had been a great success, and for a family of six it also made economic sense, allowing them to spend four weeks on holiday rather than the traditional two.
Were there any downsides? “Well, I locked away my bling and the family silver, of course,” she said. “Oh, and I spent weeks beforehand cleaning out cupboards that had not seen the light of day for many a year. Otherwise it was great.”
That evening, having uploaded a few snaps of our house – and thrown in a few more of our pied-à-terre, in Portugal, for good measure – I joined a house-swap site and settled down for some armchair travelling.
I was quickly seduced by thousands of chic and glamorous homes. Midterm in a hacienda in Mexico? New Year’s Eve in a Chamonix ski lodge? The possibilities seemed endless.
I sent requests about some places we were interested in, with a couple of paragraphs about our family of four, our interests and our hobbies, then waited. Offers started to arrive within a week, mostly from middle America, with quite a few from Australia and New Zealand.
For my children, two Celtic tiger cubs, aged 12 and nine, who have been dragged around the world since birth by their wanderlustful mother, the idea of yet another US jaunt or long flight to anywhere held little appeal.
Soon, though, I received an offer of an “old colonial house on a hill with wrap-around terrace and views of the ocean” in exchange for our Dublin house this summer. Intrigued, I logged on and found the house listed under “Réunion Island”.
I dashed to my son’s room, to locate it on his map of the world. Ah, the Indian Ocean. Isn’t that just for honeymooners?
After more research I presented it to the children as a small tropical island where life is like a cross between Finding Nemoand Madagascar,with a hint of the dodos from Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaursthrown in. Now they were interested.
The internet told us that Réunion belongs to France – and is therefore part of Europe – is largely French speaking and has an active volcano. The children were now definitely keen.
E-mails passed back and forth between Madame, Monsieur and me, and before I knew it I had committed to a three-week house swap. Yikes!
Fortunately, air fares were falling, so we paid €3,000 for four tickets from Paris with Air Austral – not much more than we might have spent on a family fortnight in Spain. When my long-suffering husband muttered about impending economic doom I pointed out that, should Armageddon materialise, we would at least have seen the sun set over the Indian Ocean.
As the world indeed teetered on the edge of financial meltdown I distracted myself with images of tropical palm trees and turquoise waves. Madame and Monsieur were most keen to visit Ireland and were especially looking forward to the Book of Kells and Connemara.
The recession deepened, and we wondered about the appropriateness of such a grand holiday. But we persevered, and before long the day of our adventure arrived. We left our guests a bottle of Baileys and some tourist information and set off for Charles de Gaulle airport, in Paris.
At 9pm, in a corner of the terminal filled with dreadlocks, brightly coloured African dresses and a few French families, we boarded our plane, and within an hour we were enjoying a gin and tonic and an extremely good three-course meal.
After a generous offer of a second quarter-bottle each of not-bad Bordeaux, the next thing I remember was waking up to a glorious pink and orange sky off the southern coast of Africa. The Indian Ocean coastline veered into view. We had arrived.
We emerged, blinking, into the hot sun of a tropical winter. Our taxi through Saint-Denis, the capital, passed bright Creole mansions and Parisian-style cafes. Older women in polka-dot dresses, crocodile shoes and straw boaters strolled home with baguettes. We drove past the port, with its cargo ships bound for nearby Madagascar. On one side was the sapphire ocean; the view inland was of emerald mountain peaks.
"Bon joo! Comeng ca va?" said our driver as I struggled to make sense of his accent. During our three-week stay we failed to meet another English speaker, and I was thrown back on that year spent in Paris during my student days.
The taxi climbed high above Saint-Denis to a lovely house even prettier than the pictures. The view of coconut trees and an expanse of ocean would, I pointed out to my weary family, be hard to find in even the most upmarket hotel.
We were surprised, after sleeping for most of the day, to find the sun setting at 6pm. Our hosts had left us the use of a small Peugeot, so we set off in search of food. One travel book had mentioned tenrec cari, or curry – a tenrec is rather like a hedgehog – as a local favourite. A curry made from bee larvae was another.
Between us we tried goat and marlin cari, served with rice and a ubiquitous chilli sauce called rougaille. Over the course of the holiday, between the odd take-out pizza, we sampled many versions of cari, Réunion's national dish.
We also visited the volcano, which was as eerie as being on the moon, and the factories that process much of the vanilla used to make Coca-Cola. There were fields of sugar cane, and of the plants from which vetiver and ylang-ylang are produced, to be sent to the great Parisian perfume houses. The aroma of caramel from the sugar-cane plants was heady.
We travelled high into the mountain villages where runaway slaves had made settlements of bright Creole houses surrounded by banana and red-pepper trees, and exotic flowers.
Réunion is a hiker’s dream, full of awesome peaks, waterfalls and ravines. The coastal town of Saint-Leu is a famous skydiving spot – and home to a “left-hand wave” that attracts surfers from all over the world.
Geckos, chameleons, bats and enormous yellow-legged spiders delighted the children, as did the bright blue ocean, as warm as their bathwater. They loved snorkelling in it, and found many beautiful fish, coral and shells.
Alas, some things never change. Just as the journey home from my childhood summers in Rush and Bettystown always seemed twice as long as the journey out, so it was that the 24 hours it took us to travel back to Dublin seemed endless. Nor had the torrent of local doom and gloom disappeared in our absence.
Madame and Monsieur waxed lyrical about Connemara and the Book of Kells.
Should the world as we know it indeed be ending, I’m just glad that I got to see the sun set over the Indian Ocean on the wondrous island of Réunion.
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