Blogs from New Caledonia, Oceania

Comme promis pour la fête des mères, je mets quelques photos en ligne et promets d'essayer d'en mettre plus régulièrement. Bonne fête Maman. Gros bisous de toute la famille.... read more

9 October 2012 Tuesday. We arrived at Lifou Island of New Caledonia shortly after breakfast. The weather was overcast once again. Nevertheless, Linda and I lined up on the sixth deck for the pass to get on the tender which would take us to shore. The island looked interesting from the ship…a low lying limestone and coral island with plenty of palm trees and some stretches of white sandy beaches. A church was located on the hills on either side of the beach we were headed for. Upon landing we walked to the grass shacks that sold souvenirs, and Linda bought a lava lava or sarong or whatever they call it in New Caledonia that our daughter could use as a table cloth. Then we walked to the top of the ridge which formed the backbone ... read more

La deuxième semaine, Thomas m'a prêté une voiture (une petite Clio) avec laquelle l'idée était de faire le tour de l'île (ou du "Caillou", comme l'appellent les locaux). Ça m'a premis de découvrir la diversité des paysages apparemment caractéristique de la Nouvelle Calédonie, qui changent du tout au tout entre le nord et le sud de l'île: on peut y trouver des zones quasiment désertiques au sud, qui, à cause du rouge de la terre, donnent l'impression d'être su Mars, des zones complètement vertes et humides, avec forêt tropicale et tout, de vastes prairies sèches qui font penser au far-west, des zones un peu plus montagneuses, de la mangrove... Tout ça donne la sensation d'avoir parcouru d'énormes distances alors que je n'avais fait que quelques centaines de kilomètres... J'ai aussi pu découvrir les joies de l ... read more

We’re back in Denver after a journey that has taken us to Hangzhou, Singapore, Bali, Darwin and Australia’s Queensland coast, and across the Pacific by ship. We stopped off along the way at ports in New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, and the two Samoas (Western and American), and ended our thirty-three day sea voyage in Honolulu. We also got to relive April 23rd two times over by crossing the International Date Line. Like some of my literary forebears (Jack Kerouac), I worked my way across the Pacific. But unlike Kerouac, I didn’t have to wash dishes or swab the decks on a pukey tramp steamer. Instead, I lectured aboard a state of the art cruise ship – Royal Caribbean’s "Rhapsody of the Seas" - in exchange for room, board, and passage for myself and Nancy. Normally I ... read more

We made it into Sydney, just. They closed Highway 5 that we were travelling on as there had been an accident and Ken Ken didn’t want to know about taking an alternative route so with the aid of the compass on our iphone, we somehow managed to get to where we needed to be. Having dropped off the car we needed a taxi to get to the ship but looking like a reasonably tidy version of ‘The Clampits’ – remember the TV programme many years ago? 2 drivers refused to take us but eventually a nice man stopped for us. The Cunard ship Queen Mary was also in port and had pinched our berth and made our ship look like a rowing boat but talking to some passengers the following day, we were very glad we ... read more