The Grand Brulé

The Grand Brulé, the injuries of the Piton de la Fournaise

Sculpted by the lava flows from Piton de la Fournaise, the Grand Brûlé is adorned with a thick basalt mantle. Located to the east of Reunion Island and the volcano that gave birth to it, the Grand brûlée belongs to the Fouqué enclosure. It extends from the rampart of Tremblet to Saint-Philippe to the rampart of Bois Blanc at Sainte-Rose.

Regularly covered by new flows, the Burn victim is an improbable landscape between cooled lava and intact forest vegetation. Nothing stops the route of the molten magma which comes to finish its course in the Indian Ocean, sketching with each passage a new curve to East cost Reunion Island.

You will have the opportunity to observe this curiosity of nature by passing through the national road 2, called the lava route, repaired at every whim of the Piton de la Fournaise. Want to trample dried lava flows? Go to the car parks of one of the three proposed routes, on the flows of the year 2000, 2002 or 2007.

Take a detour to Pointe de la Table, a frozen lava plateau that has enlarged the intense 30 ha island and visit lava tunnels. On the way back, stop at the Tremblet beach, which formed during the eruption of April 2007 during a meeting between the bubbling lava and the waves of the Indian Ocean.

After heavy rains, you can admire provisional waterfalls and perhaps witness the return of Alan, an elephant seal who came to bask the pill on the green-golden sand between 2008 and 2011.

For more than visits to Reunion consult our interactive map of Réunion.