New Caledonia And Another Day At Sea

New Caledonia (which, honestly, I'd never even heard of) is known as the Paris of the South Pacific.  And it's certainly easy to see why.  The port looks like something straight out of the Riviera.  Beautiful.



We didn't have a planned excursion, but heard that NC had a string of lovely beaches just minutes from the city centre, so we looked for the hop on/hop off bus and bought tickets.  The bus goes around in a loop in the city and has about ten stops - you can see a lot just riding around on this bus.

Our first stop was Anse Vata beach.  A public beach right on the boardwalk with shops and restaurants lining the avenue.  We laid out our towels and took in the scenery - as well as a dip in the harbor.

And then there's this...

Because we wanted to see more than one beach, and we didn't want to wait on the bus and have to make the circuit, we back tracked to the stop before Anse Vata: Lemon Bay.  Of course, that walk got us a little hot and thirsty, so before we hit the beach, we hit a bar.  Sammys, this one's for you.

Here's Lemon Bay

Our day in NC was coming to a close all too quickly, so we hot-footed it to a nearby shopping center to do a bit of souvenir shopping...and to see if we could find some local beer to buy and take back to the ship.  Turns out that, while there aren't any Baptists in NC, their liquor laws are screwier than Texas ever thought about being.  You cannot buy beer on Friday, Saturday or Sunday.  Let's review: You cannot buy beer on Friday, Saturday or Sunday.  WTF???  I guess you have to plan on it if you want to get drunk on the weekend.  One of the locals told us that they have one of the highest drunk driving problems in the south pacific, so they put this measure in place to try to deter that.  Naturally, it's not working.  Bastards.  We returned to the ship beerless.

As we got cleaned up for dinner, the sun began setting over the harbor.  You're welcome.

Saturday (yes, it's Saturday here) was a day at sea.  We're on the way to Brisbane...quite a long way away.  Overnight, we hit a storm that rocked and rolled the ship almost to distraction.  I felt like an oarsman on the Edmund Fitzgerald.  By morning, it had subsided a bit, but I still didn't have my legs under me, and there was lots of spontaneous line dancing by folks walking around on deck.  The sea calmed and the day brightened, so we hung out by the pool all afternoon.

Tomorrow we'll be in Brisbane and have about three pubs on our agenda...along with a bit of seeing the city.  Next post from Australia!