April 12, 2016
New Caledonia Take Two: It would have been a lovely bike ride
Unfortunately our perfect day in New Caledonia didn't get off to the best of starts when I woke up to find Dea complaining of a painful and itchy eye that had apparently kept her up most of the night. It was sufficiently bad for her to consider going to the onboard medical centre, but we had a busy day planned riding our bikes around the island we had sailed to overnight, and she decided not to bother and see if it improved.
The ship had anchored a few hundred metres from the island, which was much flatter than the one we had been at the day before, though equally as green. Because of the shallow depth of the water it was necessary to use lifeboats as tender boats to get us from the ship to the shore. We pushed our bikes down the hallways and into the elevators, gaining admiring looks and comments of 'I wish we'd thought of that' from other passengers. I knew we would be allowed to take our bikes off the ship because I'd gone and checked with front reception the night before, and it was going to be a great place to ride them. The island was not heavily populated, and our research had told us there would be a nice cycle along the coast to a beach and some caves, about fifteen kilometres from the ship.
We got our bikes down to the main deck and I carried mine down to the dock next to one of the lifeboats that was being used to ferry passengers back and forth. Greeting me was no less than the captain of the MS Noordam himself. It seemed he was abandoning his ship, and going ashore himself for the day. “What is thish?” he said, in a thick Dutch accent, “You cannot take your bicycle on the tender boats.”
“What?” I said, “We were told that we could!”
“No. The tender boat is for people, not bicycles. I've been doing this job twenty years, nobody has ever taken bicycles on tender boats. Out of the question.”
Well, that didn't seem like a very Dutch attitude to me!
I retreated back inside to Dea, waited until the lifeboat with the captain on had left, and then tried to sneak on a different lifeboat. No good, one of the staff stopped me. There was simply no way that we were going to be allowed to take our bikes off the ship now, not after the captain had spoken. He was, after all, the captain. His word was final.
Now that our planned day of cycling had been ruined we took our bikes back to the room and Dea went to the medical centre as she was worried her eye might be getting worse. It cost $95 to see a doctor though, and so she thought her eye didn't feel too bad once she heard that, and she didn't bother.
So we took a boat to shore without our bikes. We had hoped we might be able to rent bikes from the small village where we arrived, but it was a no-go. It was a very strange experience to arrive in this village, with a few south-sea islanders loitering around simple homes, and hundreds of white tourists with cameras around their necks jumping on buses. We couldn't do that of course, so we just walked along the road away from the village towards the beach. It was beautiful, and so nice to be off the boat and walking along through such lush green environs. Occasionally we would come to an area right next to the sea, which glowed in various shades of turquoise and blue. Our goal was to find somewhere to snorkel, but everywhere along the shoreline was sharp rocky outcrops from which we would not be able to climb back out of the water.
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We walked and walked under an increasingly hot sun, until eventually we arrived at an area known as the 'Natural Aquarium.' This was a little enclosed pool, an inlet of the sea, with brilliant turquoise water. A few other cruise passengers were staring at the water, and in it dozens of tropical fish could be seen swimming around. I guessed they must sometimes be fed by the visitors, because it seemed the arrival of people excited them. The pool looked absolutely like a magnificent place for a swim, but once again it was impossible to get in and out of the water safely.
A man at the pool suggested that the beach was not too much further on, and so we kept on walking and walking. With Dea struggling with her eye we never did make it to the elusive beach, but finally we found a secret little spot where we could actually get into the sea. Dea was in pain and undecided on whether she would snorkel, so I went in first. Immediately I put my head back up again and said “You must come in Dea, it is amazing!” And it was amazing, with such a nice variety of coral and tropical fish of all sorts, it was really fantastic snorkelling.
After spending some time snorkelling we began the long walk back. I found this was quite arduous as we had walked so far, but for Dea it must have been some kind of torture. Her poor left eye was watering a lot and she had to keep it closed most of the time. I felt so sorry for her and sorry we had walked such a long way under the hot sun. I tried to keep our spirits up, in the time-honoured fashion of collecting old plastic bottles. Unfortunately the beautiful scenery in New Caledonia was blighted by a lot of trash, but we were hoping to put it to good use. We'd signed up for a ship-building contest, in which passengers would compete to build the best miniature raft out of rubbish and things. With a crew of cuddly toys on board, I was sure ours would win, and New Caledonia was providing us with the raw materials.
Once we finally got back to the village we saw a group of young guys hanging out next to a little water hole that we'd seen on the way out. It looked like another great place to swim, half cave, half pool, but again we hadn't gone in because there seemed no way to climb back out. That didn't bother one of the guys, however, as he did a back-flip into the water. They were friendly young men, they simply seemed a bit bored as they loitered around here smoking marijuana, and I wondered what else there was for them to do on this island. We didn't ask that though, we just asked how the guy was going to get back out of the water, and we got our answer as he agilely free-climbed up the sharp rock face.
We finally got back to the ship, me doing my best to look normal about the big bag of dirty old plastic bottles I was bringing on board. Poor Dea quickly retired to bed, keeping the lights down low and putting a cold flannel over her eye, whilst I made enquiries about bringing the bicycles on the lifeboats. The following morning we would be in Vanuatu, and only staying one day, and it was another tender port where we'd need to take the lifeboats ashore. I didn't really mind about not cycling in New Caledonia, what with it being a French territory, but Vanuatu, as a fully fledged UN member state, was a potential number 46 for my country count. I had to cycle there. I had to.
“So the problem,” I confirmed with the front desk staff, “is that we can't take bicycles because they would block the passageways on the lifeboat?”
“Yes, that's right sir.”
“Okay, thank you.”
I'd had another one of my cunning plans.
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