New Caledonia

Sunday March 18th

The port today was Noumea, in New Caledonia and The best of Noumea was our excursion today.  The side we saw first, near the port, looked rather run down. We had a couple of stops on high points to get a view of the town,  another one at a church, then had a snack and coffee at a hotel that was once a Club Med - it was not a very busy hotel.  The last point of call was the Aquarium which had a few nice exhibits. 

I was a little disappointed in that there are very few of the colonial buildings left here - the guide pointed out two and a wall that the convicts had built for a fort which was never finished.

Monday March 19th

Our excursion  today was at 9:15 for 9:30 am, which was a wee bit early so we had a fairly quick breakfast then presented ourselves in the showroom for getting onto the tender as we were anchored in a lovely unspoiled bay off the island of Easo, still in New Caledonia. 

This island was really nice - unspoilt and it looked very south sea islandish.  We drove passed some pleasant housing, the post office, hospital and a couple of schools. Our excursion was to Lifou Vanilla house, the centre of the vanilla bean production for the Loyalty Islands, a group of three Islands that are part of  New Caledonia. 

The process to produce the vanilla beans we purchase in the shops is very simple but very very long - months of drying.  It was very interesting. 

We returned to the beach and made our way back to the ship. The beach is perfect and a lot of the passengers were availing themselves of it. While walking down the jetty we saw a very large turtle in the incredibly  clear water.  The weather here is great - hot and sunny, good beach weather.