Nouméa

With our scheduled stop in Bay of Islands canceled we had three fairly uneventful sea days on our way to New Caledonia. We bounced around pretty good on an active sea for the first two days, but it never got too bad.

With all the itinerary changes – Port Vila in Vanuatu has been cancelled due to “storm damage” – we are now staying overnight in Nouméa, the capital of New Caledonia. I was frankly a little surprised that this stop was not cancelled or replaced. There has been considerable unrest in New Caledonia recently, with 13 deaths occurring in riots that happened just over a year ago. The underlying issue is how the territory, a possession of France, should govern itself going forward. France sent police and military forces to watch over the situation, and a minister is here talking to the local populace, but nothing has been decided.

With all that as the background, we pulled into Nouméa harbor early on June 2nd. The city itself is frankly not very attractive, but the surrounding hills are a nice backdrop. Many have the endemic New Caledonian Pine growing along the ridgeline, making for nice silhouettes against the sunrise. We had no plans until later in the morning, so we had a late breakfast. We had signed up for an “excursion” that would drop us at Baie des Citrons for some snorkeling. I put “excursion” in quotes because this was literally nothing more than a 10-minute bus ride. We only signed up for it because we thought we had some free excursion slots to fill. That thought was called into question, but more on that later.

The bus dropped us in front of the aquarium rather than right at the beach, so we took a walk around the point to where we could stake out a spot. It turns out that we could have cut across the base of this little peninsula for a shorter walk, but we didn’t know that at the time. The walk was nice and the exercise welcome, so no problem there.

We set up camp and tried the water, which turned out to be a bit cooler than we’d expected. Nevertheless, Liz and DJ got their snorkel gear and waded in. DJ didn’t last long, saying that it was too cold, so I replaced him. It was cool at first, but plenty warm enough once you got used to it. And the snorkeling was actually quite good! It was not crystal clear water, but there were large coral formations and plenty of fish, clams, and other invertebrates to check out. It was well worth doing.

We didn’t stay too long and took the bus back to the ship in time for a late-ish lunch at Waves. After a quick cleanup we went back out into town for a walk. We walked around a park, which was nice, but the town had a very closed-up vibe. I could find no reference to a holiday of any sort, and I am wondering if the tourist trade has simply been hollowed out by the unrest. Many stores and restaurants were closed, and the handicraft market at the cruise port was only about 25% staffed.

With a latish lunch we had a light dinner served via room service. Then some laps around the running track to wrap things up.

The next day we had an earlier excursion so we got the boys up and into the Terrace for breakfast by 7:45. We did our post-meal laps outside on a gorgeous morning. Our excursion for the day was a simple “best of Noumea” tour, but it turned out to be quite nice. We started off with a trip up to a statue of the Virgin Mary that overlooks the town. It was an interesting little shrine and provided some nice views. From there we went down to the aquarium, which was small but excellent. They had some very good displays featuring sea creatures we hadn’t seen in aquariums before, such as sea snakes.

From the aquarium we wrapped up the tour with a trip up to a hilltop for some more good views of the area. I got a couple of life birds on the hill, which was a nice bonus. The trip was basic, but we enjoyed the aquarium and the views. We really only took it because we had some excursion slots to fill…we thought. We’ve been battling with destination services to get a clear understanding of our account status. I don’t know why this is hard, but the account summary provided from reception is a mess and we get different answers about how many excursion credits we have from destination services depending on who we talk to. This has caused some unnecessary stress as we don’t really want to be spending time doing bookkeeping. We’re going to try one more time to walk through it with someone there. If that doesn’t work we’ll escalate the issue to the GM to get it sorted. (Late update...per the account status available on the TV we now have some shipboard credit rather than the startling amount due that was showing previously. Progress, I guess.)Read more