(From Saint Pierre, Reunion Island, January 26, 2014)
I have come to Reunion Island in the southern hemisphere using the special leave I received from my company.
The first day was mostly spent moving around.
Depart Haneda at 1:30 a.m. 12 hours to Dubai, 2 hours wait, then Dubai-Mauritius 7 hours. Emirates Airline to Mauritius. Here I changed to Mauritius Airlines and went to « Reunion Island » where the last most beautiful village in France is located.
Surprisingly, this is my first time using the international terminal at Haneda. It’s not as small as I thought, and it’s convenient; it’s also good that it’s open 24 hours.
It will be more and more convenient because they are going to increase the floor from this April 2014. I don’t need Narita more and more.
This is the first time for me to fly with Emirates Airlines.
It is painful that carry-on baggage is 7kg. It is very severe for me who has SLR and MBP.
This is a tough level unless you lighten the bag itself. This time, since it was a short trip of about one week, I could still manage it, but I have to avoid using it if I can, because I have more baggage for the tour of the beautiful village of GW that I go every year.
Emirates Airline, the service was good or not, it is only economy class, so it may be inevitable to give or take in this class, but honestly it was unsatisfactory.
Luggage restrictions and inadequate service, next time I won’t use it unless it’s business class.
On the other hand, the airport in Dubai was very easy to use.
The airport is smaller than I expected, but it’s really nice that it doesn’t take much time to get to the connecting flight.
The Arabic notation is also fresh.
Emirates Airline is used until Mauritius. Finally, transfer to Mauritius Airlines to Reunion Island.
Even though it was only a 40-minute flight from Mauritius, the timing of the connection was not so good and we had to wait here for 5 hours.
One of the disappointments of Mauritius is that it is very far from the airport to Port Louis, the largest city on the island and the capital of the Republic of Mauritius.
It’s about 40km away and it takes about an hour by car.
Because of the check-in procedure, the actual waiting time is about 3 hours and a half. If you deduct 2 hours of round trip time, you can enjoy only 1 hour. If you also take into account the round trip taxi fare, it doesn’t seem to be beneficial at all.
Then, there are few places where you can go sightseeing near the airport.
In the end we had to kill time at the airport.
It’s a small airport, so there are not many shops. It was still too early to check in, so I decided to kill time at a small cafe outside.
Fortunately, there was public WiFi at the airport, so I was able to get online with my Mac and iPhone. It took a long time to get access, though.
Speaking of killing time at the airport, I used another staple, the unlimited overseas packet service. My carrier, softbank, supported both Dubai and Mauritius.
However, in the case of Mauritius, cellplus, which is an eligible carrier, is displayed as orange. Is it OK? I was worried about it, but I started up my PC and did a search, and it seems to be OK. I heard that they changed the company name.
But it makes me uneasy, so if possible, I would like softbank to correct the name of the target carrier for Mauritius on the unlimited overseas packet service website.
Finally, it was 22:00 and we left for Reunion Island. My sleepiness was already at its peak. I fell asleep right after boarding and found myself on Reunion Island.
It was past 23:00 when I arrived at Reunion airport. From there, I went through immigration, collected my baggage, and took a taxi to my hotel in the city. It was already past 24:00.
I went straight into the shower and fell asleep immediately.
初日、到着までの日記はこれまで。明日からはいつものとおりレンタカーによる観光が始まります。（続く）
