La Réunion

M and I arrived on La Réunion after our 11-hour flight from Paris totally wiped out, so we mostly relaxed at her parents' place the first day and then began all our adventuring the next morning. The first thing M's dad, P, took us to see was the naval cemetery! And seeing as how La Réunion was completely lousy with pirates during the 18th century, the naval cemetery is pretty much the pirate cemetery!

The crumbling old graves made of black volcanic rock were really spooky; it's a weird contrast to the bright sun and brilliant greens and blues everywhere on the island.

P checks the map. We were looking for the cemetery's (and arguably La Réunion's) most famous inhabitant...

Olivier Levasseur, better known as La Buse (the buzzard)!! One of the most notorious pirates of the Indian Ocean, La Buse was hanged in 1730 for piracy, and he was allegedly buried standing up, so he can never rest. While awaiting execution he wrote down the whereabouts of his treasure in some kind of complex code and then threw it to the crowd from atop the gallows, and no one was ever able to decode the thing and find the treasure. I was told people are still looking for La Buse's treasure on La Réunion to this day.

Totally by a weird coincidence, my friend Calamity Jon Morris got in touch with me just before my trip to tell me he was reading a French comic book called Bourbon Island 1730 (Bourbon Island being the old name for La Réunion), which turned out to have tons of references to La Buse's trial and execution as a backdrop to the main fictional story of the comic. Jon just sent me a copy of the comic and it really does mention almost everything I learned about La Buse in the various conversations I had about him with people on La Réunion.

Wow man, a real life skull and crossbones on a real life pirate's grave. Amazing.

Some German guy left this empty liquor bottle on La Buse's grave! It was maybe not a good idea for us to touch it. Add it to the long list of times I've flirted with getting myself cursed.

Someone also apparently left him a cannon! Sweet!

Spooky old graves!

Sign indicating the path to a mass grave for some naufragés — drowning victims from a shipwreck.

Coins on a pirate's grave.

I believe this is a grave from one of the first ruling families under French government on La Réunion.

Pray for us.

That's M's mom, D, on the right there.

M stopped back at La Buse's grave to leave him a flower on our way out.

After roaming around the cemetery, we passed through a side gate to arrive immediately on the beach! This was my first time seeing a black sand beach, and also my first time touching the Indian Ocean! We waded in up to our ankles but we couldn't swim here, unfortunately, because the island is surrounded by zillions of sharks, and the only safe places to swim are the beaches that are protected by a barrier reef. Pictures of that stuff, and a lot more, coming later!

Next: Part 2 — Turtle farm!