Lava Road

This is the strangest stretch of road on Réunion. Between Sainte-Rose and Saint-Philippe, a 2-hour drive from the residence, the RN2 crosses the Grand Brûlé: a vast corridor several kilometers wide through which the Piton de la Fournaise sends its lava flows all the way to the ocean. With every major eruption—1977, 1986, 2004, 2007, and even 2026—lava has covered the road, and each time it has been rebuilt right on top of it. Signs along the route mark the dates of the lava flows: you’re literally driving over the volcano’s eruptive history.

The landscape is lunar, entirely black, strewn with rock blocks frozen in mid-motion, and yet alive: pioneer vegetation—lichens, ferns, and then the first patches of colored woodland—is reclaiming the land year after year, and you can tell the age of each lava flow by the density of what grows there. It’s an open-air laboratory unlike any other in the world.

Stop at the 2007 lava flow, the most impressive of all: it expanded the island by several dozen hectares and created a new, still-barren coastal plain. Take a detour to the Puits Arabe and Pointe du Tremblet, then continue on to Saint-Philippe to visit the Jardin des Parfums et des Épices, a cultivated forest where vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, and two hundred species of spices grow beneath the canopy.

Be sure to bring water and a hat: there’s no shade along the entire route, and the black basalt reflects the heat like an oven.