Advertisement
Published: September 4th 2010
Edit Blog Post
New Caledonian money
the birds on the left are kagu, the national bird of the country. On the right are rusa, which are a sort of giant rat with antlers. Winter. Where to go that is close, cheap to get to, not very wintery, and which has some nice birds that I haven't seen before? That's right, New Caledonia. It is true that it doesn't have a reputation for being cheap once you're actually there, but New Caledonia's international airline Air Calin ("fly the cuddly skies") has teamed up with Air New Zealand to get more tourists over there for less money. What is a bit sneaky, however, is that if you book with Air Calin you pay two or three hundred dollars more than if you book with Air New Zealand -- for exactly the same flight! Just goes to show you always need to check all the alternatives...
New Caledonia may be sunny but Auckland sure wasn't when I arrived there from Christchurch in the early morning. The rain was lashing down and the onward flight was then delayed on account of fog (they couldn't find the plane....) so when I finally got to the intended Pacific isle it was quite a bit later in the day than anticipated. The first birds seen on the trip were, as may perhaps have been expected, common mynahs at Tontouta Airport,
view of la Place des Cocotiers
the bird-filled park in the middle of central Noumea, just near the Auberge de Jeunesse. In English it is the Place of Palm Trees. followed by spot-necked doves and an Australasian harrier on the ride into Noumea. The airport is about 45km away from Noumea, I suppose due to geographical reasons, so it takes a while to get back and forth. I had been going to book the bus to Yate for the next day to get me to the main bird-spot, Riviere Bleue national park, but the ticket booth at the bus station had already closed up for the day by the time I got there. However Noumea really is very birdy itself, and while wandering round town I came across various common introduced birds (house sparrow, feral pigeon and red-vented bulbuls), some local forms of other birds (silver gull, glossy swiftlet and rainbow lorikeet), and also a couple of regional specialities, the unimaginatively- (and rather inappropriately-) named dark-brown honeyeater and the green-backed white-eye. This last one had me a bit confused for a while because the field guide suggested it should only be in the forests, yet it was common all over Noumea. I thought maybe the local subspecies of silvereye looked really odd and that that's what I was seeing but, no, I was right the first time (although in fact
I saw very few silvereyes anywhere, somewhat surprisingly seeing as how they should have been common too). In a patch of wasteground next to the Noumea Aquarium was a small flock of common waxbills which was nice.
I was staying at the only cheap accommodation option in Noumea, the Auberge de Jeunesse (the Youth Hostel), which is about NZ$25 for a dorm bed. Its a very nice friendly place, and in the bathroom were resident house geckoes which is always a plus. As well as random town-bird-watching on this first day, I also had to drop by the supermarket to stock up on food because I was going to be camping when at the places I was visiting over the course of the next two weeks. Have I mentioned New Caledonia is expensive? The supermarket chain is called Casino, a very apt name given the rate you lose money when there. Before I'd left someone had told me that a loaf of bread in Noumea cost the equivalent of NZ$20, a story which I had scoffed at on the reasonable assumption that if it was true then how could the locals possibly afford to live there? Turns out....it is
true! The budget brand of white sliced bread is about NZ$4 a loaf, but the better quality stuff (from Quality Bakers) was about NZ$18!!! I doubt many people actually buy these loaves however as the baguettes (French sticks) are only about NZ$1.50. Which would you choose?
My plan for the start of the trip had been to get out to Riviere Bleue as soon as I could. It would be my birthday in two days and I wanted to see a kagu (the national bird) on that day. A storm blew through in the night though and because I had been reliably informed that Riviere Bleue closes up when it rains, I booked a bus instead for the next day to get me to Farino which is the second main bird spot. So that I wouldn't be sitting around doing nothing for the spare day, I visited the Aquarium des Lagons (otherwise known as the Noumea Aquarium) and then took a wander in the drizzle around the Ouen Toro Forest Park in the south of the town, where I saw a few more birds.
The Aquarium really is very nice. Its not terribly big but that's only to
tank for freshwater fish
mainly flagtails, as well as a few gobies, gudgeons and eels. Very nice tanks in this aquarium. be expected given that the Noumean population isn't very large and there's only a limited number of tourists. Its situated very handily for the majority of those tourists, being directly between the two main beaches; and also handily for me, being on the way to the Ouen Toro Forest Park! (I of course had no interest in the beaches *cough cough*). Everything displayed in the tanks is local. Some of the fishy inhabitants are fairly standard but something you don't see every day are corals displayed under ultra-violet light which makes them glow in the dark! It is a well-known fact, but I haven't seen it shown in an Aquarium before, especially on the scale as here. Also most fascinating were the flashlight fish, which have flashing lights in pockets under their eyes so when in the dark all you can see are green spurts of light blinking on and off. Very cool.
Funny observation number one: French people drink their tea and coffee from little bowls -- how wierd is that!?
Advertisement
Tot: 0.103s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 8; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0736s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb