A Weekend in Reunion, Off the Beaten Path

Two days on Reunion Island is not enough for the cirques, the volcano, or Mafate, and this plan does not pretend otherwise. It covers exactly two things properly: Saint-Denis on arrival, then a full day on the one stretch of coast where swimming is not banned. Everything else on this French volcanic island waits for a longer trip.

Day Focus Drive time
1 Saint-Denis arrival, the Barachois waterfront 10-15 min from Roland Garros airport
2 Saint-Gilles/L’Ermitage lagoon, plus a Maido detour 35-40 min each way

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Day 1: Saint-Denis, and an airport named for the wrong sport

Land at Roland Garros Airport (RUN) in Sainte-Marie, about 10km from Saint-Denis, and note the trivia before anyone else does it for you: the airport is named for Roland Garros, the aviator born on Reunion in 1888 who flew solo across the Mediterranean in 1913 and died in a WWI dogfight in 1918. The Paris tennis stadium was named after him a decade later, in 1928, because aviation was treated as a headline sport at the time. Neither venue is named after the other; both simply honor the same dead pilot.

Walk Le Barachois, the old seafront promenade where cannons still face an ocean that has not needed defending in a long time, then head up Rue de Paris to see the 19th-century Creole mansions, Maison Carrère among them, built on sugar money and free to view from the street. The Jardin de l’État next door is Reunion’s oldest botanical garden and a shaded break before dinner. Currency here is the euro: Reunion is a French overseas department and part of the EU, though it sits outside Schengen and the EU VAT zone, a detail that matters for customs and mobile roaming, not for sightseeing.

Day 2: The lagoon, and a village you can see but not drive to

Drive the Route des Tamarins or the coastal road to Saint-Gilles-les-Bains and L’Ermitage, 35-40 minutes from Saint-Denis, and get in the water. The fringing coral reef here sits inside the Réunion Marine Nature Reserve, with a steady 24-27°C year round and genuinely calm, shallow swimming. That last point matters more than it sounds: swimming and surfing have been banned across most of the open west-coast ocean since July 2013, after a serious shark-attack cluster. The lagoon is the exception, and the Centre Sécurité Requin is the body that monitors it, so treat “swim only in the marked lagoon” as a real rule, not a suggestion.

Before the beach, if you are an early riser, drive up to the Maido viewpoint, about an hour from Saint-Paul, and look down into the Cirque de Mafate before the cloud rolls in around 8am. Roughly 800 people live in Mafate’s scattered hamlets, reachable only on foot or by helicopter, and this viewpoint is the only way a two-day visitor sees any of it. Depart from Roland Garros in the evening, or add a night and let the 3 day itinerary take you up into Cilaos instead.

Do you need a rental car for just two days?

For this specific version, not strictly. Saint-Denis to Saint-Gilles is a straightforward Car Jaune bus route (day ticket around €6), and taxis cover the rest. A car earns its keep the moment Maido enters the plan, since no bus climbs that road, and it is genuinely worth renting anyway if there is any chance you extend the trip. Every longer itinerary in this family treats a car as non-negotiable; this one is the sole exception.

Is the shark ban going to ruin your beach day?

No, and it is worth being precise about why. The ban applies to the open ocean beyond the reef, not to Saint-Gilles and L’Ermitage’s protected lagoon, which is exactly where the water is calmest and the sand is softest anyway. Locals swim here daily. The rule only bites if you wander past the reef break looking for bigger waves, which is also not where the fish are.

Skip the temptation to also squeeze in Cilaos on a weekend; the 400-hairpin drive alone eats the better part of a day, and arriving exhausted to a spa town nobody has time to enjoy defeats the point of visiting it at all.