Today was a quick run out to the Cirque de Mafate caldera and back.
After yesterday's excursion, the climb up several thousand feet above the cloud base, through countless switchbacks is becoming passe. First through the villages, then the sugar cane fields, into the national forest (grassy forest floor and achingly pretty groves of fairytale trees laced with picnic benches where you could eat your last supper and die contented), emerging above the treeline into highland scrub, densely populated by luxurious gorse, of all things. It looked just like Wales without the rain. And the howling wind. And the sheep. And you could see forever out over the coatal plain across Indian Ocean. And it was warm and sunny. And the open air cafe served great coffee and was not jam packed with lads from Manchester in dripping cagoules thawing out in a tobacco laden fug that you could cut with a knife. It wasn't like Wales at all, but it does have a lot of gorse.
A short hike up from the car brought us to a precipice overlooking the yawning abyss that is the caldera. Yesterday we were beaten to a dizzy pulp by the drive into and through the Cilaos Caldera. Today we stood on the rim above the Mafate caldera, on the edge of a vertical cliff that plunged thousands of feet to the floor and looking across its miles wide length and breadth.
Mere hyperbole can't capture this any better than any of our photographs. It was awe inspiring. The view fills your entire field of vision. Several thousand feet below, the caldera floor is a broken tangled mass of peaks and spires and valleys and gorges and ravines. It accessible only by foot, but there are clusters of hostels, huts and tiny hamlets spread across it. It must be a murderous walk in and grueling hike through. It was marvellous just to sit in the long silence of the high clear air and drink it all in.
A tourist helicopter buzzed my perch shattering my reverie and I turned to leave. The visceral reality of the vision began to fade as soon as I put one foot in front of the other.
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