Northern Grande terre

Unfortunately there are no direct flights between Bali and New Caledonia, so we had to take a flight with Qantas to Sydney and a connecting flight with Air Calin, New Caledonia's only long haul carrier (they have as well a domestic only airline), to Nouméa. We had an exit row on Qantas and found some cozy couches at Sydney airport so we did sleep a bit before arriving at our new destination.

At the airport of Tontouta we went to the car rental company and picked up our Dacia Logan (a sub brand of Renault, yes we are on french influenced territory :) ). It was spacious enough to house our two backpacks, all our camping equipment and food that we were about to buy. As New Caledonia has roughly the price level of Switzerland (it's expensive to live in paradise!), we could not afford proper accomodation every night, thus we had brought all our camping gear along: an Hilleberg two-person tent, warm sleeping bags, silk sleeping bags, camping matrasses, a gas burner to cook and all our camping cooking ware. For sure it is possible to travel New Caledonia without camping, but it was great fun and given that we had planned a good 2,5 months in Australia afterwards (yet another expensive country) trust us: bringing all this equipment along did more than pay off!!! And at this point once again a big thank you to Moni's family for the great tent they had given us as present. It is super functional, spacious, weather and wind resistant, light-weight and it made camping a lot more enjoyable than if you have an average tent only.

Outside the airport we were greeted by grey sky and rain - welcome to paradise :). We spent the first night in Nouméa to get food supplies. As even a dorm bed in a hostel was 30€ per person per night we stayed with a lovely French couple (search for Jeremy et Caroline in Dumbea) that we had found via airbnb for half the price. After Asia it was quite a change to be back in a Western country with big Carrefour supermarkets, fresh baguette, cheese, ham, milk etc around. When we took out cash from the ATM, Moni first thought the ATM had cheated on her because she only got 2 notes out, but well... Where in Asia you get a bundle of 20 notes for an equivalent of 200€ in New Caledonia you only get 2 and it was correct :).

Even though the first afternoon and evening was a bit rainy, for pretty much the rest of our 3 weeks (with small exceptions here and there) we had sunny and warm weather - or better said hot and humid! January was middle of summer (like August in Europe), just that these guys are living in the tropics so summer is even hotter and definitely more humid than in Europe. We left Nouméa in the late morning as we quickly stopped at the tourist information to get additional maps, brochures and information. Then we hit the road and made our way to Poé, a tiny little village next to largest lagoon in the world (24.000 squre km) enclosed by the second-longest barrier coral reef in the world.

On the way there we stopped in Bourail to see the "Roche Percée" and "Le Bonhomme de Bourail", a massive boulder cut out from the rest of the rocks and standing on the tip of a tiny peninsular. As the couple in Nouméa had told us that there was a cool pilot project running in Bourail where they take you to the beach at night to see female green turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs we went to the tourism office and got two tickets for that evening.

Then we made our way to our campground (le rêve de Nemo!) for the next two nights, a well-maintained and spacious grassy place next to the turquoise lagoon with good facilities. Setting up the tent for the first time took us quite a bit of time, but after a couple of times we became real pros ;). Then we did a short walk along the beach and went for a swim in the sea that was probably around 32 degrees and not really a refreshment. Felt like sitting in a bathtub or a hot spa (the ideal temperature for Moni's dad)... .. At 20:00 we arrived at the meeting point to see the turtles. We were shown some videos about green turtles (all in French as we were on French territory) and as soon as the volunteers reported a turtle coming ashore on the beach one group was going down to watch the turtle lay its eggs. We were unfortunately in group 3. Where group 1 and 2 got to see the entire process we only got to see the turtle leave the beach again and go to the ocean. Well, as always with mother nature: you never get a guarantee...

The next day we were woken up by the sun that was mercilessly shining through the trees on our tents and turning it into a little sauna. While at 6:00am Alex went for a nap in his hammock outside (thank you Beni and Vanessa, Alex loves it!), Moni put on her bikini, strolled to the beach and went for a swim. After breakfast we went back to Bourail where we wanted to do the hike of the 3 bays. It was a 1.5 hours hike to see 3 different bays: la baie des tortues (turtle bay), la baie des amoureux (lovers' bay) and la plage de la roche percée (beach of the pierced rock). On the way Alex almost stepped onto a Lauticauda (a sea kraits named tricot rayé in New Caledonia, it is highly venomous) that was sunbathing on the rocks, so thereafter we watched our steps more closely. The sun and humidity were making us sweat and on the way back we decided to take a shortcut from one bay to the other through the water. This was supposed to be possible at low tide and we were just shortly after low tide so we thought it was alright, but Moni ended up walking in the sea with water up to her chest and Alex had to carry the backpack on his head :). But it saved us time and got us a tiny refreshment. In the afternoon we rented a kayak and trained our arms by paddling through the beautiful lagoon up to the reef.

The next day we headed further north to reach Koumac through the Caledonian outback (like in Australia, parts of Grande Terre have been given to ex-convicts or settlers in order to colonise the island and create big ranches with cowboys). Koumac is a tiny town situated on the northwestern tip of Grande Terre. About halfway we stopped in Voh to see the famous "coeur de Voh" (one of the most iconic pictures of Grande Terre), some soil in a mangrove forest where no trees are growing and from above it looks like a perfect heart shape in the middle of the mangroves. Usually people take a flight as from the air you get the best angle to see it. For us that was a bit expensive so we did a hike up to a viewpoint. As usual we had the French timing and started walking at around 13:00 :). We were boiling after 5min climbing up the hill and obviously from the viewpoint you do not get such a fantastic view of it, but we could make out the heart shape below us. Then we carried on to Koumac, set our tent on a campground just next to the sea and went to the marina beach to watch the beautiful sunset.

The next morning we headed out to see the "grottes de Koumac", a cave system that was accessible to the public free of charge. Armed with our headlamps and spare batteries we went in to explore the cave. We saw some nice stalagmites and stalactites, but after all the impressive caves we had visited in Laos it was nothing too special. But at least it was nice and cool inside ;). After the visit it was time to cross the island and make our way to the more remote and less touristic east coast, populated largely by Kanaks, the local indiginous people with polynesisn roots. The landscape over there was quite diverse with beautiful views of the sea, rugged mountains and immense lush and green valleys. We stopped at the beautiful waterfall of Colnett along the way which was quite a high waterfall with lots of pools in between to dip in and cool off. We even had to take a small car ferry to cross one river before reaching the little township of Hienghène where we stayed for two nights.

The first day we went diving with the local operator as the waters of New Caledonia were supposed to be really beautiful and Hienghène in particular. We had two dives (all briefings, instructions etc. in French so Moni was proud she managed to understand) which were quite different from what we had experienced in Indonesia before. In terms of fish around we did not see such a great variety, but for the first time we did some cave diving which was pretty cool and exciting. We swam through some small and medium sized tunnel systems that were full of sea fans, some of them really big. Our dive guides went into the tunnels first and lit up the branches of the sea fan so they were glowing in bright red! Amazing! On top we saw something quite unique, a "lime électrique" which apparently translates as "electric flame scallop". It is a mussel with a bright red mantel and tentacles. The mantel seems to create electricity which looks like the mussel is shooting out bright blue lightening bolts. Cool stuff and we saw two of them !! Feel free to google it if you cannot imagine what this thing looks like (we probably couldn't)...

The next day we had to go to a laundry shop to get our dirty clothes washed and used the time to check out one of the main attractions in the area: "la Poule Couveuse", a limestone formation in the bay that looks like a chicken laying an egg. Well, check out the pictures, we are sure you will be able to identify it easily. There was another limestone formation called "sphinx" but you needed a lot more imagination to recognize it than for the chicken.

And by midday we hit the road again and continued our way down the east coast, enjoying beautiful views of lagoons, bays and beaches before crossing over to the west coast again. As we needed to give the car back at the domestic airport the next day and catch our flight to île des pins, we went up to La Foa (100km north of Nouméa) on the west coast and camped on a beautiful site in the forests. On our last morning we went for the quick hike to the waterfalls of La Foa with our local guide, a friendly female dog that accompanied us all the way :).

We truely hope you are not yet tired of reading our articles or at least looking at our pictures and we ask you to stay with us for the next article because especially the pictures of île des pins will knock you out - promised ;).

Take care and let us know news from home.

Cheers,

Moni & Alex