Why Réunion
It is a French department dropped in the Indian Ocean, eleven hours from Paris, where you pay in euros, your mobile plan works and the French health card is valid. Nothing to convert, nothing to translate, no paperwork — and yet somewhere entirely unlike home.
The island is seventy kilometres by fifty and rises to three thousand and seventy metres. You can go from the beach to a frosted summit in a day. The three cirques — Cilaos, Salazie, Mafate — and the peaks are World Heritage listed; Mafate has no road at all and is reached only on foot or by helicopter.
The volcano is live. Piton de la Fournaise erupts several times a year, usually with no danger to people, and it can be watched from the ramparts when access is open.
Entry and stay
The point almost nobody anticipates: Réunion is French and European, but it is not part of the Schengen area. For a French or EU citizen that changes nothing — an identity card is enough. For any other visa-requiring nationality, a Schengen visa gives no right of entry whatsoever: you need a visa specific to the French overseas departments and regions.
The consequence is brutal for a combined trip. Someone who wants to see Paris and then Réunion must file two separate applications: a Schengen visa for the mainland, a national visa for the island. This is the kind of detail that makes people miss a connecting flight.
Source: France-Visas, checked on 22 September 2026.
Getting around
There is no railway. The interurban network is called Car Jaune, it is run by the Region and covers the island with sixteen lines feeding into the towns' own urban networks. The fare is flat: two euros a journey across the whole network whatever the distance, with a Bat'Karé pass of one to three weeks for longer stays and free travel maintained for priority groups. A new timetable came into service on 18 August 2026.
That said, the coach serves towns, not trailheads. For the cirques, the volcano and the highlands a car is still needed — and driving is slow: the mountain roads are narrow and full of hairpins, and a journey that looks short on the map takes twice as long as advertised.
Mafate cannot be reached by car. Nor by coach. It is the only inhabited cirque in Europe with no road access: you walk in over a pass, and its hamlets are resupplied by helicopter.
Money
The euro, then, with no exchange operation at all. But INSEE measures the price gap with mainland France regularly, and it is real: in 2022 prices were on average nearly nine per cent higher than in mainland France, and thirty-seven per cent higher on food alone. A basket matching mainland habits cost twelve per cent more on the island.
In other words this is not a cheap destination, and the item that runs away with your budget is the supermarket. Open-air markets and local produce — fruit, vegetables, fish — close part of the gap; imported groceries do not.
Health
No vaccination is required to enter. The real issue is arboviral: chikungunya is actively circulating and the regional health agency recommends protecting yourself from bites during the stay and for up to three weeks after returning, until the incubation and viraemia window has passed. Repellents, covering clothes, a mosquito net, extra care at the start and end of the day. There is no vaccine recommended for travellers.
Source: ARS La Réunion, checked on 22 September 2026. The epidemiological situation moves in stages: re-check before publication.
Otherwise it is the French health system: public hospitals, town doctors, the Vitale card, and no upfront payment for anyone covered by French social security.
Before you go
The sea is governed by an order. Since the prefectoral order of 8 February 2017, swimming and wave-powered water sports — surf, bodyboard, bodysurf, longboard, paddleboard — are restricted within three hundred metres of the shore. They remain allowed inside the lagoon, in developed areas and in supervised zones defined by municipal order: Saint-Gilles, l'Hermitage, la Saline-les-Bains, Saint-Leu, Saint-Pierre. Anywhere else they are forbidden. Two sets of signals sit side by side on the beaches, the usual bathing flags and shark-specific pennants — red for a sighting reported, orange for conditions favourable to sharks.
The volcano closes. Access to the Piton de la Fournaise enclosure depends on the ORSEC Volcano plan. In the vigilance phase two trails are open up to defined limits. As soon as alert level 1 is declared — eruption likely at short notice — the enclosure is shut to the public in its entirety, the Pas de Bellecombe trail included, and that can happen overnight. Check the alert status the day before, not on the morning you set off.
Cyclone season runs from November to April. The system has several successive levels. At orange alert, schools and nurseries close. At red alert, the population is confined indoors. At purple alert, confinement is strict and applies even to the emergency services. Travelling in this window is still perfectly possible — most seasons pass without a major cyclone — but insurance covering an interrupted trip is not a luxury.