25.2.11 Noumea, Grande Terre, Nouvelle Caledonie (New Caledonia) and dresses to Dress 66
……………………………and what happened to the 22nd?
We went to bed on the 21st and woke up on the 23rd .
The 22nd didn’t exist as we crossed the International Date Line. We went to bed on the 21st minus 11 hours GMT and woke up plus 12 hours GMT. We lost a whole day despite for the past 12 days virtually every night putting the clock back an hour.
There are fabulous restaurants, with great menu, every make of French car and also top end cars Porche, BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, etc. It is quite different to the others we have seen over the past weeks.
New Caledonia
The island of Grande Terre is one of the largest in New Caledonia, so named as when Captain James Cook landed in 1774 he was reminded of the mountains in the Scottish Highlands. In 1853 a French Admiral claimed the islands for France, - not clear what happened between these dates – and it became a French penal colony, at about the same time Nickel was discovered and so the an important industry and wealth grew. There are about 130k people on the islands and half live in Noumea. The original people who now make up about 45% of the population are Karnak. We received a warm and noisy welcome from these traditional dancers – Dress 62 traditional dancers
Traditional Melanesian dancers Dress 62
The approach to the island is through a reef and into a lagoon which was added to the UNESCO world heritage list in July 2010. As we sailed in through the lagoon, about 14 miles to get to Noumea we saw many smaller reefs and tiny islands.
The views and landscapes are lovely and picture postcard palm trees line the little very well-manicured lawns and gardens. There are museums and a great Cathedrale - Sainte-Josephe- but we decided that a trip round the island, enjoy the scenery and a good French lunch was favourite.
The islands favourite Beer Number 1
David had read that the islands favourite beer was Beer Number 1 here’ s the bottle perhaps next time it will be around the world with 80 beers.
Dress 63 is our charming Waitress Nicole who spoke not a word of English, she thought we were Australians and was intrigued to find we had travelled so far.
Lunch at the Fun Beach Restaurant with Jerry and Lynda
Dress 63 Nicole
The island tour was fun with some real Australians who are travelling with us on the Aurora, Sandy and Ron, they discovered the joys of ‘old speckled hen’ and Magners whilst in England and are delighted they can get them both on board. Sandy is dress 64 bought in Waikiki Hawaii for $14 what a bargain, they had been to the beach swimming and the dress makes a great cover-up. It’s been greatly admired on board. 
Dress 64 Sandy from Sydney
Up by the lovely botanical gardens we stopped for two Japanese ladies from Osaka were looked lost, with the language barrier we are still not sure if they were or not. They are Aywko Suito and Hahiro Iino they kindly wrote their names in English and Japanese and I shall keep and treasure their names as written in Japanese and the little map of Japan showing their city and the flag they drew for me. I hope they finally got where they needed go after we left them at the port.
Dress 65 Aywko Suito and Hahiro Lino from Japan
Walking along the beach front at Baie des Citrons Lemon Bay
We saw locals playing boules and this little doll, stuck on the side of a closed frit kiosk, as every looking for dresses we all took a picture much to the amusement of the boule players dress 66 a grass skirted doll. Why it was there is unclear as is the connection to French Fries
Dress 66 grass skirted doll
The sail across the lagoon back out to open sea was great and took well over a hour, we are now 800 miles – a day or so away from Brisbane, the Australian immigration staff are on board and we all have a face to face interview tomorrow to see if they will let us in.
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