Day 5 - Noumea, New Caledonia

Today was another day in port, and was so fantastic. We did some snorkeling and it was definitely the best that I've ever done. This port was right at the land so we hopped on a bus to our meeting spot, only about 5 minutes. And then hopped onto a boat to go out to a Marine reserve. We snorkeled from the back of the boat for about an hour and just had a blast. The water was so clear, so blue, and so warm that an hour flew by. We saw turtles, reef sharks, and octopus! Not to mention hundreds of fish including rainbow coloured ones and some that looked similar to sharks. There were also sea snakes and sea slugs, pretty cool! I was itching for more than snorkeling so I dove down to the bottom a few times to look around, probably about 8 or 9 metres? I really want to get back out scuba diving!! I absolutely love being under the water. Anyway, I can't say enough about how great this excursion was. Sharks and turtles and octopus and snakes and giant rainbow fish?! Fantastic.

After our snorkeling adventure we returned to the ship for some lunch and then I went back to the room to clean up my stuff and properly unpack all of my clothing. And take a glorious nap. I was tired!! I went back to my pub and visited with my bar tender friends for a while as well as a few others I've met previously throughout the cruise. There are so many people who talk to me that I don't recall meeting but obviously I have... I'm just so bad with names and faces! I kind of wish I didn't look so approachable sometimes because sometimes I just want my peace and quiet haha.

Mom and I went to catch the 7 pm show again which was some guy who was "praised" by Queen as being a great artist. We were thoroughly unimpressed though and left early to go get dinner instead. We asked for a private table this time around because we were both sick of the small talk. I swear I've told the same stories about 10 times already... And will probably have to do it each night for the remainder of the cruise. Lovely. I think I'm going to start making up wild stories and see what happens haha. We've decided that we need the boys to join us for dinner one night to make things entertaining.

On our walk back from dinner we ran into the boys and stopped to chat for a while. Eventually I walked Mom home and then returned to have another drink with them. We watched Karaoke again for a while and saw the same people from the previous night returning to the stage. There's this one fellow named Mark who really loves to sing ;) He's not half bad either! From the Karaoke bar we went to the Ice Rink which had been turned into a stage for a country themed music night.... Needless to say we didn't participate in the dancing but observed from the bar area. When that finally wound down we went up to Dizzy's to end the evening. We ran into our other young friends, and had a blast just chatting. The bartenders there are also great and remember us as well, I love it :) When we finally called it a night and I got to bed it was about 3 am... Oops.Read more