All guides

This hub collects Reunion Island Escape's longer, more detailed guides, organised by theme and by area rather than by trip length or activity booking, for readers who want to go deeper into a specific subject before or during a visit.

Area guides work through each part of the island in more depth than a destinations overview can: the North around Saint-Denis, the Barachois and rue de Paris; the West's beach towns of Saint-Gilles-les-Bains, L'Hermitage, La Saline-les-Bains and Saint-Leu, along with the Maïdo viewpoint above Mafate; the South from Saint-Pierre through L'Étang-Salé and Grand Anse into the Sud sauvage around Saint-Joseph, Saint-Philippe and Grand Brûlé; the East through Saint-André, Saint-Benoît and Sainte-Rose; and each of the three cirques, Cilaos, Salazie and Mafate, individually.

Theme guides go deeper into single subjects that cut across areas, such as the practicalities of visiting Piton de la Fournaise, what canyoning around Cilaos and Saint-Leu actually involves, how the island's status as a French overseas department affects entry and daily logistics, or how to plan around the reversed, cyclone-influenced seasons of the southern hemisphere. Because the island's core, the area known as Pitons, cirques et remparts, has been a World Heritage Site since 2010 and is protected by the Parc national de La Réunion, several of these guides also cover what that protection means in practice for trail access, closures and where you can and can't go.

These are the pages to read when a shorter hub page raises a question you want answered properly, whether that's exactly how the road into Cilaos behaves, what a Mafate trek actually involves without road access, or how the Piton des Neiges, the island's highest point at 3,070 metres and the highest peak in the Indian Ocean, fits into a longer hiking plan.