Noumea

[Kyle]After doing most of the clearance the day we arrived, the following day we took our paperwork to Immigration, who were very nice. Then it was the usual list of laundry, shopping, boat cleaning and tank filling that ate up our first two days in the city.

We went to nearly all of the museums, apart from the one that is closed for renovation. The Maritime Museum was okay, although it was conspicuously lacking any information about traditional Kanak anything, as if the islands had been uninhabited when James Cook arrived.

We went to the World War II museum, which was small, but very well done. New Caledonia was really in the thick of it during the Pacific war. Most of the Commonwealth and American troops got their tropical training here and it was a last stop for almost everyone headed to one battle zone or another. New Caledonia and especially the native Kanaks suffered terrible losses during the war.

We then hoofed it over to the Museum of Noumea. They let us in for free because they were doing some renovating of their own. The exhibits about the history of the town and pre-European history were shut. They did have a large WWII section that was open which almost entirely duplicated what we had learned already, so we feel ready for any exam that may pop up.

We then decided to make a whole day out of going to the zoo. We had seen several brochures offering the trip for 4,000 francs. No, thanks. We could get there in a cab for 2,000, but what’s the point of that when you can take the city bus for 190.

We walked to the depot, bought our tickets in advance and triple-checked the timetable. Then we waited, and waited, and waited. It was soon apparent that there was to be no bus. (It came an hour later. They had changed the time, but hadn’t published the new schedules yet). We started walking, figuring we would find one on the way that was at least going in the general direction. Nope. Well, there’s nothing like an uphill walk in the tropical sun to make you feel alive. Every patch of shade or breath of breeze feels SO much nicer than it would while sitting on a bench.

A trip up a hill for some views (on route to the Zoo)

The zoo was very nice. They called it a “Zoo and Nature Park” on the sign. It was light on the zoo and heavy on the park. We didn’t see any of the usual zoo fare like giraffes or bears or dozing lions, but they did have a few monkeys, a handful of reptiles and loads of birds. New Caledonia has a pretty interesting set of endemic birds, including pastel hawks and the world’s largest pigeon, which is the size of a goose. They also have the closest living relative to the extinct dodo. They also have Rainbow Lorikeets, which are beautiful iridescent parrots. They are sweet and curious, but they make poor apartment pets because they are pretty loud and screechy. They had one big enclosure after another filled with lots of other parrot varieties, so I spent the day trying to scratch them all without getting my fingers nipped.

The zoo was mostly birds - Kyle loved it!

After ensuring that we had walked every trail and seen every animal in the zoo, we made for home. The sign on the bus stop said the next one wasn’t due for an hour, so we decided to go for the whole set and walk back to the boat. At least it was downhill. We were pretty limpy from blisters by the time we arrived, but at least we felt like we had properly earned the free welcome drink the marina had given us a coupon for when we arrived.

As we were walking back from the bar to the boat, Hannah from Muse intercepted us. She was with Sarah. Phil and Ollie were bringing the boat from the anchorage to the end of our line of docks. They had come to town to pick up Guy, a friend of theirs who would be sailing around with them for the rest of the week. We all met on Muse to talk about our plans to see if we could arrange any overlap. We were trying to head east to a little island called Ua, which we had heard from several sources was not to be missed. They were trying to do the same. I said I didn’t think we would get there in one day because it was upwind and I am loathe to motor all day when we have perfectly good sails that will get us there eventually without polluting the air. The plan on Begonia was to leave early and tack as far as we could before stopping for the night along the way. Phil had at some point apparently deduced my purist streak and decided Muse would do the same. After all, Guy had not flown all of the way up from Australia to be driven around on a perfectly good sailboat, had he?