La Réunion
You can be here in October for about €2,647, 4 days, 1 stop.
Why now
Prime time in October: 27°C days, sea 25°C.
The dry season from the southern autumn to spring brings clear mornings in the cirques, which is what matters here because cloud builds over the mountains by midday almost every day. Trail huts in the interior fill on French school holidays, so book them early or go outside those weeks.
Best months here: May, June, September. October is not one of them — the label above measures the month against a fixed bar, not against the rest of the year here. Daytime highs, sea temperature and rainy days from three years of Open-Meteo reanalysis; a rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, which is the WMO threshold and not the same as "it drizzled".
The place
La Réunion is a French département that happens to be a volcanic island in the Indian Ocean: hypermarkets and roundabouts on the coast, three collapsed calderas and an active volcano in the middle. It suits walkers and drivers more than beach people; the sea is mostly for looking at.
What you can do
- 01Drive up to the Piton de la Fournaise viewpoint at Pas de Bellecombe before dawn, then walk into the Enclos if the trail is open.
- 02Hike into the Cirque de Mafate, reachable only on foot, and sleep in a gîte at La Nouvelle or Marla.
- 03Eat a cari with rougail and grains at a table d'hôte in the Hauts, ordered the day before.
- 04Stand at the Maïdo lookout at sunrise for the whole of Mafate laid out below, before the cloud arrives.
- 05Walk the Saint-Denis Rue de Paris for Creole villas, then the Grand Marché for vanilla and Bourbon pointu coffee.
Where to stay · neighbourhoods
Split the trip: a few nights on the west coast around Saint-Gilles or Saint-Leu for the lagoon, then a night or two inside a cirque. Saint-Denis is for business, not holidays.
Unusual things
- ◦The lava tunnels of the 2004 flow near Sainte-Rose, entered with a licensed guide and a headlamp.
- ◦Notre-Dame-des-Laves at Piton Sainte-Rose, a church the 1977 lava flow stopped at the door of.
- ◦Grand Étang, the island's largest natural lake, on a short forest walk off the road between Saint-Benoît and Plaine-des-Palmistes.
Day trips
Flight options
Routes come from OpenFlights (historical) and a 2026 route reference compiled from public timetables. Durations are the published schedule where we have it, otherwise a block-time model fitted on measured nonstop flights. Verify schedules with the airline before booking.
Entry requirements · IT passport
Source: passport-index-data, March 2026 (coarse indicator), covering 258 of our 268 destinations for each of 199 passports. Always confirm with the destination's official site.
Airports
Distances are centre to airport derived · nonstop counts are our route reference for 2026, not every flight that exists.
Local transport
- Airport to city
- Bus, 30 min, ~€2; car essential
- Car needed?
- Recommended for most of what is worth seeing
- Getting around
- Hire a car at Roland Garros airport; the Car Jaune buses cover the coast but not the timing you need for the mountains. The coastal road from Saint-Denis jams badly at commuting hours.
- Clock
- 11 hours ahead of Los Angeles (Indian/Reunion) derived
- Daylight
- 12.5 hours of daylight in October · sunrise 05:48, sunset 18:20 derived
- Currency
- EUR
Good to know
Swimming outside the reef lagoons is restricted on much of the coast after a series of shark attacks; stick to the marked lagoon beaches at L'Hermitage and Saint-Leu.
Alternatives at a similar price
Whole trip per person for 4 days from Los Angeles in October, then the flight time; estimates, like the total above.
Seychelles
Arusha
Mauritius
Johannesburg
Namibia
Bhutan