The Eiffel Tower in France, the Piton de la Fournaise in Reunion Island!

The beautiful Reunion island, sunny most of the year, is famous for its mountains and hiking, in short, for its unique landscapes in the world. But the island is also famous for its volcanoes. Today, we count between 50 and 70 volcanoes erupting each year worldwide and the Piton de la Fournaise is still amongst the most active ones.

Emblematic of Reunion Island, the volcano rises to 2631 meters. With its large columns of smoke, its sparkling jets in the night and its lava flows coming down the mountain and illuminating it, the Piton de la Fournaise offers every year extraordinary shows for those who have the chance to be present during an eruption. This is something that must be seen at least once in a lifetime.

Prime attraction of the island, the Piton de la Fournaise, like its neighbor Piton des Neiges, is a classified UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site. The volcano erupts on average every eight months. Note however that some years are more active than others. As demonstrated by the year 2015: the Piton has delighted many by erupting in February, May, July and August; and the year is not over yet...

Obviously, these are scenes to admire from afar. For example you can observe the volcano from Grand Brulé or Bois Vert. The risks are very minimal for local people. The eruptions are usually known weeks in advance by the Volcanological Observatory. Security measures are taken at the first sign of eruption, but often the authorities prohibit access to the public only in the early days, in order to give time to the volcano to stabilize. The magnificent lava flows are still visible by flying over in an helicopter or if you’re lucky enough, on board of a motorized ultralight glider. That’s for sure an unforgettable memory, for both locals and tourists.

The Piton, whether active or not, remains a sensational Natural Heritage site, with its incredible lunar landscape of lava rocks and its land covered with orange-brown slag. If you travel to Reunion Island during a period where the Piton de la Fournaise is not erupting, you can still see these sensational traces everywhere on the island, especially in the south where the successive lava flows from the volcano came down to the ocean to form black sand beaches such as the one at Etang-Salé. That’s for sure an exceptional landscape to be seen.