Noumea

Monday, 13 June to Saturday, 18 June, 2016
We tied up at our berth at Port Moselle and were met by Herve of Noumea Yacht Services who accompanied Warren to the office to check in, while Herve arranged for Immigration clearance (part of the Downunder Rally service).

Quarantine and Customs were advised of our arrival and we subsequently had a visit from a very nice Quarantine lady who took our fruit and vegies (and egg shells as I had cooked our last few eggs). She laughed when we said customs were coming next. No, she said, they are sleeping! No visit so after the required time were we allowed to go ashore.

Yachties meeting place

We spent our time in Noumea catching up with friends already here, finding the best bread shop, supermarket and sorting out some internet.

This proved to be an interesting challenge. We bought a card from Herve who helpfully set it to English language. We then started to see our credit slowly disappear when we were not using it. When I went to the post office to find out what was going on I was told that Africans from Mali had planted a virus on my phone that resulted in texts being sent to England (that we were paying for!). They kindly printed off the phone numbers. When I pointed out that the time of the texts was the same as the time I rang customer service I was told that “No those calls are free – it is the pirates!).

I got Herve to set the phone back to French and loaded some more credit. Gregory at the Post office was very helpful but assured me that the calls to customer service were free and that the texts were probably my iPhone texting England for updates to apps. I said I didn’t think this was likely and asked him to please not set the phone to English! (He was trying to be helpful).

Gregory was a good example of most of the people we have met. When asked if they speak English, they all say a little but in fact we are able to be understood most of the time with a little pointing and a lot of Merci (Thank you).

Exploring with Vicki and Tony

While in Noumea we also hired a car with friends, Tony and Vicki from L’Attitudes and drove around the countryside. This enabled us to visit some of the sights south of Noumea although some of the roads were a bit average.

Blue River Nature Reserve

We also visited the local Maritime Museum which had a great display about the last voyage of La Perouse whose ships were wrecked in the Solomons.

Today we stocked up at the local market and departed to spend a few weeks in the lagoon to the north of Noumea.

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