Cilaos

Cilaos was one of the last parts of Réunion to be settled. Its name is generally traced to a Malagasy word meaning a place one does not leave, and the cirque was first occupied by maroons — people who had escaped slavery on the coastal plantations and took refuge in the interior, where the walls of rock made pursuit difficult. Slave-hunters tracked them down in the 18th century, and settlers arrived around the middle of the 19th century, farming the terraces and the flatter ground at Îlet à Cordes.

Thermal springs found in the cirque in 1815 changed its prospects. A spa developed around the waters from the middle of the century, patients were carried up in carrying chairs along steep paths before any road existed, and the village grew around the baths, the church and a handful of shops. The church of Notre-Dame-des-Neiges was built in 1858, and Cilaos became a commune in its own right, separate from Saint-Louis, in 1965.

The road up the gorge from Saint-Louis, cut through rock and built with a long succession of hairpin bends, was opened to traffic in 1932 and ended the village's isolation. Buses, then cars, then visitors followed, and the local economy turned from subsistence farming to a mixture of agriculture and tourism. The thermal establishment was rebuilt in 1987, the wine was brought within the official vin de pays rules in the early 2000s, and in 2010 the cirque became part of the area inscribed by UNESCO as the Pitons, cirques and remparts of Réunion Island.

The culture of Cilaos is that of the hauts, the high interior: self-reliant, Catholic in its calendar, Creole in speech, and shaped by generations of families who farmed steep ground. The village church of Notre-Dame-des-Neiges gives the settlement its patronal festival, and the small chapels of the hamlets still gather their neighbourhoods.

Three local products carry the village's name across the island. The Cilaos lentil, grown on the terraces and at Îlet à Cordes, has its own autumn festival. The wine of the cirque, made from vines planted on the valley floor, is a rarity in the tropics and long had a reputation as a rough home-made drink before growers organised to improve it. And the embroidery known as jours de Cilaos, an openwork technique developed in the village in the early 20th century and taught to generations of women, is still worked and sold here.

Walking is the other shared activity. The village is a hub of the island's trail network, and its hotels, guides and shops all serve hikers; the Grand Raid, the ultra-trail that crosses the island in October, passes through the cirque and turns the village into a supporters' camp for a night. Sunday remains a family day of long lunches and picnics, and maloya and séga are played at village celebrations as everywhere else on the island.

About 5,000 people live in the commune, spread between the main village and the hamlets of Bras-Sec, Îlet à Cordes and Palmiste Rouge. It is a small and shrinking population: young people leave for the coast or for mainland France to study and work, and returning to live in the cirque usually means working in tourism, farming or public services.

The economy rests on visitors, agriculture and the thermal baths. Guesthouses, gîtes, restaurants, guides and outdoor shops employ a large share of the village; lentils, vines, chayote, garlic and market vegetables are grown on the terraces; and the spa draws people up from the coast. Almost everything else is trucked up the mountain road, which makes prices higher than on the coast and leaves the village exposed whenever landslides close the route.

The day is governed by the weather. Mornings are bright and cold enough for a jumper, walkers leave before dawn for the Piton des Neiges, and by late morning cloud pours over the ridges and settles on the village; evenings are quiet and dark, with few places open late. In the cyclone season the cirque can be cut off for days, and households keep supplies for it. The population swells at weekends and in the dry season, when coastal families come up for the cooler air.

Cilaos cooks the island's Creole repertoire with mountain ingredients. The lentil is the emblem: small, brown, grown on the terraces of the cirque, and served either as a plain side to a cari or cooked into a thick stew with smoked pork. Chayote, called chouchou, grows on trellises along the lanes and appears as a gratin, in salads and in soups; garlic, beans and winter vegetables that struggle in the heat of the coast do well at this altitude.

The standard meal is a cari — chicken, pork or duck — with rice, grains, a rougail of tomato and chilli and a spoonful of piment, often eaten at a guesthouse table as part of half board. Smoked meats, brèdes (leafy greens) and civet de cerf, a stew of venison, appear in cooler weather, and bonbons piment and samoussas are the snacks sold from counters on the main street.

The village makes its own wine from vines on the floor of the cirque, sold at the cellar and in shops, and rhum arrangé — rum steeped with fruit, spices or vanilla — is offered at the end of meals as everywhere on the island. Bottled spring water from the cirque is sold across Réunion, and the thermal springs themselves are taken as a cure rather than a drink.