After years of waiting for the opportunity, we are finally taking a two week holiday in New Caledonia. The flight over was with Air Calin which was comfortable and uneventful. The seat pitch was a lot more generous than it is in many other economy classes we have endured. If only it was just a 2.5 hour flight to everywhere! Immigration and customs formalities were a breeze, compared with Mike's visit here many years ago on business when Australians required a visa and French officials were snooty reminders of the Rainbow Warrior.
Money could be easily changed at the airport, when the truth is first brought home to you that the Australian dollar is pretty miserable at the moment. The French Pacific Franc (official name XPF, we think, but it also goes by numerous other abbreviations) is permanently tied to the Euro and one Aussie battler only gets 60XPF and it takes 200XPF to buy a bus ticket in Noumea!
The deals to come to New Caledonia were excellent (mostly 2 for 1), so we lashed out spent our first 3 nights in Noumea at Le Meridien. We suspect this was previously a Club Med. This uber-expensive hotel is ultra comfortable, but suffers the disease of 5 star hotels everywhere, and charges extra for almost everything, even for a towel at the pool, and not a nominal sum either.
Le Meridien is just on the edge of the Anse Vata area of Noumea, where most visitors stay, we think. The hotel fronts onto Anse Vata beach, a very popular and pretty beach, spectacular blue in the sunlight, no surf, lots of activities can be hired such as windsurfers, kayaks etc. Anse Vata town runs in a strip along the beachfront, and features lots of cafes, restaurants, tourist shops. On the Anse Vata pier there is a noisy bar, a dance club, and a top notch restaurant called Le Roof, into which we did not venture.
Off Anse Vata beach are two islands, one is Ile des Canards, just a 5 minute water taxi ride. This is for day trippers wanting to swim and sunbake without too much riff-raff. The other is Ilot Maitre, a tad further out, featuring a luxury resort with over-water bures.
Jogging, walking and biking for recreation is very popular, and at the coastline around Anse Vata and nearby "mountain" Ouen Toro is blessed with a great track that is well utilised. The wild bush around Ouen Toro contains hiking trails ranging in difficulty to "tres difficile". The advanced tracks are poorly marked and Mike almost got lost on this mountain on our last day in Noumea!
Public transport is excellent, with a network of colour coded bus routes. The fare structure is simple - all journeys, no matter how far, cost XPF200. The green bus services between Anse Vata and the city, and we used it quite a bit. It's not so far, though, only about 2 hours to walk the full distance, and plenty to see on the way.
Noumea is very French, as one would expect, although it must be a disappointment to expatriate Parisians. Just too small for French sophistication, and frankly, we thought the city area was more than a little bit seedy, with not much going for it. Cafes which abound in Paris are few and far between in Noumea downtown, but we found a very pleasant one at the side of the cruise liner terminal. We also saw the "Pacific Dawn" depart Noumea bound for parts unknown (to us). We did a lot of walking around downtown - there were some interesting colonial buildings, but overall, pretty uninspiring. The
view from the top of the hill behind downtown was excellent. Noumea has a large natural harbour, and the whole area was apparently a major base for the US Navy during WW2. A memorial near the harbour thanks the US for protecting them at this time.
The native population (kanaks) is substantial and seems to be largely underemployed. This obseravtion is anecdotal and may be inaccurate of course, but there's a lot of people hanging around the streets with little to do, by appearances.
Le Meridien provided us with vouchers for free drinks and 500XPF gambling chips at one of the casinos. We had our free drink (beer or soft drink only), but it was so smoky inside we quickly sought to escape for fresh air. In Paris, you can't smoke inside cafes and restaurants since January 2008, but this enlightened law has not yet arrived in New Caledonia.
We enjoyed our meals in Noumea, but the prices are poisonous to Australians. We did and will continue to target French food, with occasional excursions into Asian food (such restaurants seem to be very popular), and maybe local tucker too.
Luckily, English is widely spoken, because we have proved again that our command of French is very limited. The best environment for us to speak French is in a restaurant. In the streets and elsewhere, we are way out of our depth!
No comments:
Post a Comment