South Pacific - New Caledonia

New Caledonia was also experiencing non-seasonal weather, so we arrived in Noumea in sunshine, and had a clear day to go into the central city to look around, but the next day was terrible - cold, windy, with teeming rain that soaked us through to the skin.

We always knew that pre-booking everything might backfire on us, and New Caledonia was where it happened - in French, of course! Apart from Vanuatu, this was a snorkeling trip, so we had booked to spend three nights in Noumea when we first arrived, then had a flight out to Maré Island, accommodation there, a ferry transfer to Lifou for another four days, and a flight back to Grande Terre for the last few days.

Our flight left on time, and flew out to Maré but when we arrived but the pilot made two abortive attempts to land and then gave up. The island was clouded in, although it wasn't actually raining, but that was enough to send us scuttling back to Noumea. Anyone who has flown out of the domestic airport in Noumea will know that it isn't a great place to be dumped. There are no people there except when there are flights and there is no taxi rank and no transport into town. We hadn't anticipated being back there the same night, and had no Plan B.

Fortunately for us (and the other three tourists) the very kind woman working at the airport information booth had stayed back when it was discovered that the plane was returning, and she took us all under her wing - sorted out hotels, rang for taxis, and told us that we would not be able to get another flight for at least a week - flights were booked out, and in any case there was industrial action disrupting the airports on Maré and Lifou.

We stayed in Noumea that and the next night, giving us a day to sort out some sort of alternative holiday. We had a total of sixteen days in New Caledonia, and we certainly didn't want to spend them in Noumea. Apart from the airline (AirCal) absolutely everyone who we dealt with when re-scheduling was extremely helpful. AirBnB refunds came through, the ferry company cancelled and refunded our booking, the car hire people in Noumea found us a car hire firm to deal with in Bourail, which we had decided was the best place to head to, and within a day we were off in the bus to Bourail, with an Airbnb in La Roche Percée, down on the coast south of the town.

The arrangements worked out very well - the brand-spanking new car was delivered to the bus station, and we had six days to explore around the area. Our major disappointment was the lack of accessible snorkeling. This area is a major attraction in New Caledonia - there is a huge reef at Poé, but is about half a kilometre off-shore, and the only reasonable way for us to swim on the reef was to take a guided tour. We did this by booking on-line, and met up with Phillippe and the other people taking the tour. Kaye had major reservations - she snorkels well enough left to her own devices, but is a poor swimmer. This tour demands that you wear a wetsuit and fins, and swim together in a follow-the-leader fashion - not her style at all. In the event she suited up, went out in the boat, and then declined to jump in the water and follow Phillippe. With no regrets. Geoff later said he spent a lot of his time putting his head out of the water to see where the group was going, and that when you swam in a group you might find someone else's fins in your face. So while everyone else swam out around the highly protected reef Kaye sat on the boat and watched as a yellow-lipped sea krait swam alongside the boat, then crawled up into the outboard motor and curled up on the warmth of the cowling. One of the highlights for Geoff was actually swimming with another of the same snakes.

We did a bit of walking around the area - in particular we did the Three Bays Walk out and back from la Roche Percée, which was quite good and not too strenuous.

With so much time to fill in, we had also decided to go to the north of Grand Terre, to Poindimie on the east coast. The bus trip through the centre of the island was really good - the central mountains are high enough to make their own weather, so we went from sun to clouds and rain to sun again by the time we got to the east coast. Poindimie wasn't really a good place for us. It is a small town, where the major attraction for us was to walk on the exposed shore reef looking into the rock pools. We found quite a few interesting animals but there is only so much of that you can do. There are off-shore islands, but it wasn't at all obvious how you might get out to them. Unlike Fiji, there did not seem to be a culture of boats and boatmen for hire to get around. Kaye resorted to reading novels in French to pass the time.

We took the bus back to Noumea with a day to spare, packed outselves up and flew off to Brisbane to collect our car and drive home.

There are three slideshows for this part of the trip. Choose the slideshow that you want to see from the drop-down menu. The slideshow will automatically change pictures, but you can stop and start this automatic display and choose individual pictures from the thumbnails or use the forward and back pointers to view the slideshow at your own pace. Swapping between slideshows can take a few seconds to synchronise, and you may miss the first two slides, but they will loop back again!