Advertisement
Published: October 2nd 2006
Edit Blog Post
18 September, Monday... After a nice sleep in Sydney airport they reopened the main doors at about 4:30am and we could check-in. A nice flight with a disaster movie (Poseidon) as the in-flight 'entertainment' and we arrived in Noumea, or at least a bus ride away (after being rather worried we'd missed all the buses). By the time we got to Noumea and checked in to the hostel the light was starting to go so we walked to the centre, checked out the main square (Place des Cocotiers) and got some din-dins. For a capital the town seems quite small and laid back, I think this is going to be a prety chilled out week.
19 September, Tuesday... A boring morning sorting out washing and buying boat tickets. It seems French is very much the main language here and I have realised that my French GCSE isn't going to get me very far. English may have to be used and doesn't seem to be too much of a problem if you speak slowly. Also, it's quite expensive here, probably on a level with the UK but fresh food is rather more. Not the cheap getaway we hoped for.
We walked to the National Museum and it was closed on Tuesdays (of course) so we hopped on a bus to the Cultural Centre out of town. Mainly a collection of photos in a funky building there's some arts and crafts of display too and some tribal style huts to look at. Perhaps most interesting was the photo exhibition on a Tuvalu tribe which still lived in the traditional way, the father of the family was quite surpised at the level of development on New Caledonia and I have to say, so was I (although not so shocked to see cars).
There's really not much to do in the evenings here.
20 September, Wednesday... Time to use those boat tickets I mentioned. We went to the Ile des Pins (sorry, no accents, but translates as Isle of Pines) after being promised a quiet, idyllic island with white sands, coral and, errm, pine trees. We were not dissapointed, our campsite (I told you it was expensive) was practically on the beach, there were plenty of corals and fish in the bay and the sand was white. The whole island is also covered in pine trees and there is one bakery and two shops, no public transport and a big hill in the middle to climb for the view (maybe tomorrow). Well we just went to the beach and didn't do anything else this day. Evenings are super quiet (no pubs, oh no!) here.
21 September, Thursday... Errm, we stayed at the beach all day. Sunbathing, reading, snorkelling. A trip to the bakery in the evening, how exciting.
22 September, Friday... The guide book told us to go to the Baie d'Oro to check out a natural pool with bright blue colour and fish so there we went. Only problem was that it was 20km away and there's no public transport, the solution... hitchhike. It's pretty safe here but with the frequency of cars we probably still walked about 20km on the roundtrip (me in flip flops) and the French had to be used, although minimally. We got there, it was lovely. I'll add a photo to my flickr account before it goes on here. We cooked a lovely meal of cold pot noodle, tinned fruit and biscuits dipped in jam we hung our heads in shame and went to bed.
23 September, Saturday... Well, we didn't have enough walking yesterday and I only had flip-flops so we went up the Pic N'gar in the middle of the island. The view was pretty excellent, you can see all over the island although not from one point at the top but on the round trip. Pictures to follow...
24 September, Sunday... Back in Noumea now and time to go diving, supposedly New Caledonia has the second largest coral reef in the world. We took a boat out to Amedee Islet, sight of a lighthouse and took two dives. The first dive we were at the reef and saw lots of lovely coral and fish as well as a ray (spare a thought for poor Mr Irwin if you will). The second dive was on or around an old French patrol ship intentionally sunk for divers. It was quite cool, less fish but we did get to swim though the cabin (not sure if that's really allowed). The instructor thought Thom was out of air so Thom had to have some emergency air, all jolly exciting but fortunately (or is it?) he's fine and wasn't really low on air.
25 September, Monday... Back to Sydney
Advertisement
Tot: 0.15s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 12; qc: 69; dbt: 0.0784s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Charlie
non-member comment
How exciting
Bet it wasn't as good as Croatia!!!