Noumea port of call

Came in this morning Tuesday 12 September 2017 on the P&O Pacific Explorer and had nothing planned.

I did not want to do a ship’s tour and found very little information here, so this is what is on offer at the cruise terminal.

City Highlight Noumea Tours – a double decker red bus offered a 90 minute tour for $A25..

Contact details tours@noumea2d.nc ; Noumea2deckers or phone (687) 50 00 88.

Hop-On Hop-Off bus – all day tickets at the terminal for $A12. On board P&O Pacific Explorer they were $A20! Departure from cruise terminal every 20 – 25 minutes. Duration 40 minutes.

Green Train - $A42 (P&O Pacific Explorer Tchou Tchou train – yellow - $A49.99) Departures: morning ships – from 9.30am and afternoon ships – from 3.30pm. Duration 90 minutes.

However a combination ticket for both the Hop-On Hop-Off bus and the Green Train cost $A50.

Contact details and more information at lyvai.com/en; tour@lyvai.nc or phone (687) 72 17 69.

I hope that this information helps and saves you some money. I did not take a tour – I have been here before so just wandered around for a couple of hours.

Interesting large supermarket across the road from the terminal.

There was a swimming area just near the end of the pier where the ship’s tender docked in Tadine, where a ladder had been put into the water for easy access. There were concrete ramps, but they looked to be very slippery.

This early in the day, there wasn’t much going on – there was a sort of “tourist desk” where a three stop, one hour tour was offered, with the opportunity for a drop off at Yejele Beach to catch the ship’s shuttle back. The tour was $A20 – supposedly for an hour but ours was a little longer than that.

The only tour offered by the P&O Pacific Explorer was to Yejele Beach at $A9.50 each way - $A19 return. The ideal option would be to do the local land tour, drop off at the beach and return with a one way P&O shuttle ticket.

As it was only early, I was the only one listed to do the tour so to fill in time I walked around the parking area – I did ask if any of the drivers standing around did tours, but they seemed to have no English, and were talking in their local language – I didn’t hear any recognisable French.

About 8.45 I walked in the opposite direction and came across a church like building and then a group of locals, women and teenagers, preparing food to be cooked in the traditional way in the ground. The idea was for the school children to interact and practice their English.

I could see yams, tomatoes, spring onions, shredded coconut and a small chicken. Unfortunately I was unable to stay to see the cooking as I wanted to get back to see how my tour was filling up. This took a long time and the tour finally left at 10am, with another 8 and then finally thanks to a group of 9 Chinese who made the trip viable.

We travelled in a new Mercedes Mini Bus with Jean Claude (a larger than life personality!) as our guide and Emile as our driver. Our first stop was at the natural aquarium, about 2km from the town. This is a shallow almost landlocked area where the fish come to be fed with bread brought along by Emile. There were many types of fish, at times there is also an eel and occasionally an octopus, but not today.

There is coral of sorts, unfortunately most of it was dead, due to people climbing down and swimming/walking on it. A little further along we had another photo stop – a jagged, rocky coast and still no beach, but beautiful colours in the water.

Another stop did yield a tiny beach, a little way from where we were parked and I was the only one who walked to it.

Our next stop was at Emile’s village where the locals had set up a small food stall by the roadside. I bought a coconut (they cut it open for me) to drink $A3, but I didn’t bother to eat the young flesh as I also selected a tray with papaya, coconut, and finely sliced baked pumpkin to eat – that took care of $2 so I didn’t have to worry about change from my $A5 note. Lots of people had the coconut, but not so many had the fruits.

There was a group of young boys hanging around the bus, the youngest one kept climbing in! One of the boys was wearing boots a few sizes too big for him and a couple of the boys were eating chips and hot dogs with tomato sauce!

There were many different types of houses – large and small, but the interesting ones to me, were the thatched ones – sometimes round, sometimes square and sometimes rectangular.

When we arrived at Yejele Beach everyone got off but me! Some negotiated with Jean Claude for a return pick-up time (they had no P&O shuttle tickets) and others had the P&O shuttle bus tickets. I would have liked to had time to see the beach, but Jean Claude wanted to get back to Tadine, where there was quite a crowd waiting for the next trip.

Contact details for Jean Claude: enokajeanclaude@gmail.com or phone (687) 87 83 62 or Emile (687) 95 65 97.

After saying goodbye, I walked back along the road, hoping maybe that the school children might still be there with their cooking, but all was deserted. I decided to continue to see the “caves” mentioned earlier by some passengers who had been to Mare previously.

They said it was about 1km, and I would know them when I saw them – I didn’t know quite what to expect. As it was the walk was just under 20 minutes (old lady time) and after coming to a rise in the road, I saw a large cleared area on the left – a future parking area perhaps?

And yes, there were the “caves” - limestone like formations in the cliffs beside the road. They did not appear to be very deep. If some of the shrubbery was cleared away, one could get a really good look at them.