Travel with Dale & Margaret

We had a restful night docked in New Caledonia and we set out early in the morning to check out the sights. Nouméa is referred to as the “Paris” of French Polynesia because of the significant and somewhat Paris-like development in the down town area.

Britain established a settlement here in 1851, but the French were anxious to assert control so they established a settlement in 1854.  This settlement was initially called Port-de-France and was renamed Nouméa shortly thereafter. The area served first as a penal colony, later as a center for the exploitation of the nickel and gold that was mined nearby.  During World War II, Nouméa served as the headquarters of the United States military in the South Pacific.

We took a shuttle bus into town (which turned out to be only a few blocks away) and walked around looking for an Internet café.  We also needed a cable for our iPad as we couldn’t find the new style cable, only the older iPhone-style ones we brought (we later found it in the backpack).  We did find a store that carried Apple products and a bunch of other electronics, so we were in luck!  While it wasn’t quite “Paris”, it did have more infrastructure than the other French Polynesian islands (an Apple store and everything!).  The main thing that looked like Paris were the sandwich shops with their baguettes.  Nice enough town, however.

We found a pretty good Internet connection in a café in the port terminal building and, after dodging a few rain showers, were able to get back to the ship in time for lunch.  Our plan was to take the short walk back into town and go on a quick tour, but again, the rain kept us at bay every time we got close to leaving!

Later in the afternoon we got the news from our Captain that he had decided to change our itinerary.  There is a ridge of low-pressure right where we are scheduled to sail, so he has changed our course to try and stay out of the 15-30 foot swells that are forecast.   The swells tonight shouldn’t be more than 15 feet, which isn’t too bad.

This has been a pretty soggy trip so far…not much sunshine and no good sunrise or sunset opportunities.  We’ve had a lot of rain, which is good if you like to be hot, humid and wet.  Unfortunately, we don’t.

Today we are in Port Vila the capital of Vanuata, which is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean.  Yes, another South Pacific archipelago.  And yes, it has a volcanic origin!

Vanuata is inhabited primarily by the Melanesian people. Melanesia is a sub-region of the Oceania area extending from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji.  The region comprises most of the islands immediately north and northeast of Australia.  The Vanuatu group of islands was discovered by Europeans in 1606 and again in 1774 by Captain Cook.

We had high hopes of going for an “independent” tour on Vanuata.  So we “got up, got out of bed, and dragged a comb across our head”.  It was raining off and on so we decided to go ashore when the rain was “off”.  Dale brought his computer to the Horizon lounge, which has a view off the front of the ship, where he worked on editing pictures (I offered my opinion when asked), and we waited.  As soon as the rain broke, we’d gather our things, dropped some stuff off at our stateroom, and then discovered it was raining again.  This went on for hours.

We did speak to some folks, who had taken an off-road jeep tour, who told us about their adventure.  They said they got covered from head to toe in mud!  They weren’t even sure the ship would let them back on without hosing them off first!

While that sounded like fun, it’s not really my kind of fun, so we waited some more.  Evidently, we waited too long as we noticed the ship had pulled away from shore!  Oh well.  There is malaria in this region and we haven’t started our malaria medication yet…so we figured it was wise to stay on-board.

The seas were pretty rough tonight so we opted to eat dinner in our suite.  One of the nice features of staying in a “penthouse” suite is that you not only have a butler, who “buttles” us regularly, but we can also dine in our room from any of the restaurant menus.  Tonight we had a 3 course dinner from the Polo Grill.  I had brought some no-flame candles from home (battery operated) and I set them up around the room so we’d have some nice ambiance!  We borrowed a DVD from the on-board library and watched it while we dined.  It was a wonderful evening.

OK, we’ve learned a few things since we “lost” Wednesday this week and it was a simple but pretty cool realization. While we did lose a day this week when we crossed the International Date Line, we will be getting that day back 1 hour at a time over the next 2 ½ months! That means we gave up 24 hours in one chunk but we get it back slowly which means we end up with an extra hour of sleep for a whole bunch of nights on the cruise. Not too bad!

Today is a sea day and there is not much to report. We’ve met some nice people and have had some fun dinners with them and some more are planned for the coming days.

We’ve been asked by some of our fellow cruisers to help them understand the general differences between Oceania (the cruise line we are on now) and Regent (the line we are getting on in Auckland and the one that we sailed on for over 150 nights). We have some good ideas about it now that we’ve been on Oceania for the past 2 weeks, but we are going to wait until we’ve been on Regent for at least a week to post our comments. The reason for the delay is that there have been a lot of changes in the cruise industry with the advent of the “mega ships” – seasoned staff members are being poached from the higher end cruise lines and that means the smaller, older ships are suffering from the loss of these folks. Stay tuned for our post on this some time in the coming weeks.

Tomorrow we have another sea day and arrive into Noumea, New Caledonia tomorrow evening.  The last French Polynesia stop on our adventure!

This morning we arrived at Lautoka, Fiji, which is part of the area that was flooded during the past few days.  Dale woke early hoping for a sunrise picture and, while he missed the sunrise, we were happy to see that the sun was shining and there was no rain in sight!

We had another excursion planned for today so we are off to see the “Garden of the Sleeping Giant”.  We really didn’t know what to expect, but at least it was a little sunny and we were able to experience the lush green of Fiji.  The bus took us to a village where we needed to meet with the chief who would then, if he liked us, grant us access to go through his village to the Sleeping Giant.

We drove up to a large building where we sat in chairs surrounded by locals selling their pearl and shell jewelry as well as various trinkets made from wood.  Fiji provides a significant amount of mahogany to the U.S. and other places around the world.

The guides had selected a member of our group to act as our representative “chief” and the warriors and village leaders came out to perform their welcome ritual.  This was followed by singing and dancing (a lot like yesterday) and then the drinking of the kava, which is a strong tasting liquid made from the root of the kava plant.   Once we were “accepted” they danced some more and invited some of our group to dance along with them!

Then we were off to the Garden of the Sleeping Giant.  The Sleeping Giant, it turns out, is the name of a mountain area that resembles a, you guessed it, large man lying down.  The garden area contained lots of orchids (they claimed 3,000 but, while we weren’t counting, we doubt the claim).  After a sweet cool drink we were back on the bus.  There was supposed to be another stop, but due to the flooding they just took us for a drive-by of the airport (??).  That was sort of strange, especially since it was the opposite direction we needed to go!  Then, we had a photo op outside of the Budget rental car facility where we were to take a picture of the sleeping giant, which is a mountain range that looks like a fat man lying down, sort of, if you could see it with the power lines in the way.  I guess you have to be a local.

Downtown Lautoka was not at all like the downtown Suva experience.  Here, it was more like being in India than Fiji.  Almost 50% of Fijians are of Indian decent and there seemed an even higher percentage in Lautoka.    Where downtown Suva was clean and modern with large buildings, the area in Lautoka where we were brought was filled with smaller vendors and wasn’t as modern or clean.

Back on the ship we relaxed a bit and took an early evening walk around the deck.  There are a LOT of walkers on this cruise and sometimes the walking deck has maybe 50 or more people walking around and around.  This is not a large ship (about 600 passengers) and when 50 of them are all in one place it gets pretty crowded!  We opted to walk at sunset and only saw a few other couples enjoying the cooler evening weather.  Next we were off to dinner in the main dining room.

We have another sea day tomorrow as we make our way to Port Vila, Vanuatu.