Smart Travels: video

Showing posts with label video. Show all posts

Sunday, 12 March 2017

Ziskakan

Fronted by Gilbert Pounia, Ziskakan are one of Reunion's best known groups. They formed in 1979 and their style is maloya, to which they add modern techniques as well as some Indian instruments. They have toured abroad extensively: USA, UK, Belgium, India, Mauritius, Seychelles, as well as mainland France.

Here they are yesterday playing one of their most famous songs: Bato Fou.

Saturday, 3 September 2016

'Ring of Fire' Solar Eclipse on Reunion

On 1st September in Reunion we experienced a 'ring of fire' annular solar eclipse, when the shadow of the moon crossed the Earth.

The shadow's central path was 13,400 km long, but only about 100 kilometres wide at maximum eclipse, and on Reunion we were just slightly north of the eclipse centreline.

The path of the eclipse crossed central Africa & north Madagascar

Fred Espenak

Fred Espenak

My own photos are useless, but here's a round-up of some of the best photos, time-lapses and videos of the occasion. (Note that the sky wasn't extremely dark, but filters were needed in order to photograph the sun, which gives the impression of a black sky).

Woman looking through telescope at St Louis, where a viewing centre
had been set up. Photo: Richard Bouhet/AFP/Getty Images

People look through eclipse viewing glasses, telescopes or cameras in St-Louis.

This photograph of the partial phase by Stephane Moser was chosen as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on 3rd September 2016.

Image Credit & Copyright: Stephane Moser

from Etang Salé forest
© Dronecopters - Jonathan Payet

Time-lapse © Luc Perrot

Time-lapse © Frog 974

Time-lapse photo © Slooh

A combination of pictures shows the beginning to the end
(top L to bottom R) seen from a beach. © Reuters

Palm tree leaf during the eclipse © Olivier Payet aka Tofruokal

The event was also widely talked about in the world's press. Although it was visible in parts of Africa and across Madagascar, most press pictures come from Reunion.

'Ring of fire': Moon passes before Sun (BBC)
Africa stargazers glimpse 'ring of fire' during annular solar eclipse (The Guardian)
African stargazers enjoy rare 'ring of fire' annular solar eclipse (The Telegraph)
Video: Solar eclipse spectacle on Reunion Island (Reuters)
This video shows the entire 3 hours 10 minute duration of the eclipse!

Sunday, 22 June 2014

June 2014 volcano eruption

After almost four years of silence Reunion's Piton de la Fournaise volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, started erupting yesterday (June 21st) at 1:35am this morning. The eruption started on the southeastern side of the main summit crater, in a very remote part of the volcano, so there was little-to-no threat from the flows, unlike the eruption in 2007. There had been 10 days of precursory signs that an eruption was in the works, with higher gas emissions and seismicity, along with a red glow in the area very recently. After about 20 hours the eruption came to a stop.

Here are some pictures.

This was the 11th eruption in 10 years.

The previous eruption was October 14th-December 10th 2010.

See also this video, shot by local TV channel Antenne Reunion:

Useful links:

Volcano observatory webcams (although unfortunately this current eruption is not occurring in view of any of the webcams pointed at the volcano).

You might also like:

Sunday, 26 January 2014

Videos for thrill seekers

Here are two recent videos which definitely show some of Reunion's possibilities for adventure.

In the first one, by Epic TV, Réunion plays host to wingsuit pilots Espen Fadnes, Jokke Sommer and Ludo Woerth. Between BASE jumps, they find time to explore Reunion's waterfalls and cliff diving, but their wingsuit jump is still top priority. After days of planning and scouting, including an ultralight flight and wingsuit jump to scout out the area, the three pilots are ready for a flight from the top of Piton des Neiges (the tallest mountain in the Indian Ocean). But first they must get to the top...

In the second video the local organisation "Slack and run" equip and cross a highline at over 2100 metres altitude at the Trois Salazes Ridge separating Cilaos and Mafate. It's a site that offers a 360 ° panorama at the heart of Reunion (Images : Jean-Philippe Lorgeau & Jean Galabert; Editing : Jean Galabert). Don't watch if you have vertigo!

This second video was featured in the Daily Telegraph, see:

Tight-rope walking on La Réunion, Indian Ocean

Thursday, 23 January 2014

2014 promotional films for Reunion Island

Reunion Tourism board has just released two new Reunion Island promotional films for 2014.

The shorter film (4'39") has the caption Combine Your Emotions and its second half in particular concentrates on Reunion's underwater life, especially whales.

Saturday, 2 November 2013

Diving at Nosy Be

Nosy Be is a 312 km2 island located 8km off Madagascar's north-west coast in the Mozambique Channel, generally considered to be Madagascar's major tourist and main diving destination (there are 17 dive clubs located in and around Nosy Be). I've written a separate blog post about visiting Nosy Be in general.

photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland

We chose to visit Nosy Be in October as we'd heard that we had a chance of seeing whale sharks. We chose to dive with Nosy Be's (Madagascar's?!) only British-owned and run dive club: Coral Diving. Due to personal vacation constraints we were there during the second week of October although the whale shark season is mainly late October to early December. However we were in luck and on our second day of diving we got to spend an hour swimming with this majestic animal.

We were very lucky because before our first dive we'd already seen a humpback whale, and during our surface interval en route to our second dive site we saw (bottlenose?) dolphins. Not long before seeing the whale shark we then saw some very big dolphins whose behaviour was quite different to other dolphins. We distinctly saw one swimming about with a fish in its mouth. It turns out that these were rare false killer whale dolphins (also known as pseudorca) and they have been known to approach and offer fish they have caught to humans who are diving or boating. You can see them in this video we filmed:

The previous day we had started our Nosy Be diving with two dives in the Nosy Tanakely Marine Reserve. Nosy Tanakely is a tiny island a few miles off the coast of Nosy Be. A good dive profile meant we were able to have dives which lasted 80 minutes! We saw pufferfish, turtles, lionfish, moray eels, a ribbon eel, and batfish being cleaned by wrasse.

We saw lots of blue-spotted rays when diving at Nosy Tanakely
(photo © Raquel & Oscar Gomez-Eerland)

The dive just before seeing the whale shark was at a dive site called Manta Point, about 14km from the coast. Unfortunately we didn't see any mantas, but we had a dive with flawless visibility, even at a depth of 24 metres. We saw lots of groupers, unicorn fish, and some garden eels.

through a looking glass ...

The dives on our third day's diving were at Sakatia Grotto and Fusilier. Nosy Sakatia is a 3km2 island which lies just off the coast of Nosy Be. Both dives were 20-25m deep. At Fusilier we briefly saw a white-tip reef shark, and an (inoffensive) jellyfish during our safety stop.

On all our Nosy Be dives we saw a wide range of brightly-coloured nudibranches, some of which I had never seen the like before.

On our final day we started with a small wreck dive. The dive site is called Chameau ('camel') and is also about 14km off the coast of Nosy Be. We saw lobsters, turtles, and lionfish and went to a depth of about 30 metres.