Christmas Day

Christmas Day on Reunion Island was the best tropical Noel I've ever had. The strangest aspect was waking up alone in the morning and opening my presents...alone. But in the end, it's hard to be blue when the palm trees are swaying and you have Bing Crosby singing Mele Kalikimaka at a high decibel!

My day was spent with Radical Tom, Australian wonderboy. After a quiet morning playing with the toys Santa brought, I made my way to Tommy's where small children in tighty whities were running around the house deliriously happy with their new presents. The parents cattle ranged their wild things, put some clothes on the hot little bodies, and away we all went into the hills for Christmas lunch with family friends.
My recollection of what we ate is limited to something resembling bread and pastes of different varieties--meat, vegetable? No matter! The true highlight was when Marie-Christine, the matriarch, went into the family vault and pulled out two fine bottles of Rhum Arrange. This is a Reunion Island tradition of white rum distilled for months at a time with different fruits and spices. As we were to discover later in the day, it's powerful stuff. Radical and I, as the representative foreign legion, were the recipients of these beautiful bottles, a fine gift indeed.

After we heartily helped ourselves to dessert, Tom and I slipped out the back door and headed south. On a previous 'round-the-island tour, I had visited a place called Manapany-les-Bains, a large protected tide pool. It had been my hope to return for a swim, and what better time than on Christmas Day! We arrived there in the late afternoon along with 700 of our favorite aunts, uncles, and cousins. The place was crowded but festive. Radical got to work taking shots of the place, I immediately stepped on a sea urchin. It was unfortunate, but did not keep us from playing gladiator on the rocks or "who can stay under the water longer." The sun got a little lower in the sky, my urchin spikes started getting the best of me, and we ultimately decided to head homeward. On the drive back, our friend Thomas who was expecting his girlfriend from Dusseldorf, called to say that she had been stranded in a snowstorm there, and could we please come and eat the romantic Christmas dinner he had prepared? The answer was obviously yes. But first we had to swing by my place where Radical performed life saving urchin spike removal from my foot. The local cure for this is to lather the infected site with a cream laxative that supposedly relaxes the skin and encourages expulsion. hmmm... Unfortunately (!!?) all of the pharmacies were closed, so we did it the old fashioned needle and tweezer way.

Onwards and upwards! We hot footed it--ha--to Boucan Canot and the candle-lit dinner that awaited us there. Having made the best of a sad snowy Christmas situation in the northern hemisphere, Thomas did not let us down with his culinary skill. We might have been in the heart of Deutschland had it not been for the 100 degree heat in his apartment. I brought the after-dinner entertainment in the form of a gingerbread man kit that my parents had sent from the U.S. A little rhum arrange and too much sugar later, we were rocking around the Christmas tree!