Let’s just say absence makes the hikes grow longer.

When I was 22 and in the best shape of my life, I used to hitchhike into the mountains of Réunion Island every weekend to take in the dizzying views and moss-draped forests of the highlands. I spent a year there after college, teaching English in local elementary schools, and on my days off, I’d walk until dark, eat whatever leftovers I’d brought along and pitch my hammock on the side of the trail.

Twelve years later, when most of my daily life has been spent working on a laptop, I returned to the island for a hiking getaway with my wife, and neither one of us felt so light on our feet. On Day 1, after 10 hours and 10 miles on a rainy hike that crossed the island from east to west — up, and then down, nearly 4,000 vertical feet — we stumbled out of the woods by the light of our headlamps and gratefully accepted a ride from a car parked at the trailhead. They don’t call it “the Extreme Island” for nothing.

Réunion, a former French colony that became an overseas department in 1946, is a speck of volcanic rock 400 miles off the coast of Madagascar. An outdoorsy paradise of precipitous waterfalls and world-renowned surf spots, the island has never had trouble living up to its moniker. Lately, though, Réunion has become known for an extreme its tourism boosters could have done without: Since 2011, it’s been the site of one out of every three fatal shark attacks on the planet. The French government took the drastic step of banning surfing and swimming on the island’s coast altogether, but the deaths have continued all the same.