April 9, 2016
Two days on the boat at sea: And one day on the boat in New Caledonia
We began our cruise with two very welcome days at sea, the pace of life of which may be best summed up by this photo taken by Dea:
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That's not to say that we didn't do anything, however. Our second night at sea was a formal evening and we decided to dress up and go and eat in the main dining restaurant. We had both been to a charity shop before leaving and bought some second hand clothes in preparation for this. I'd even got myself some smart shoes and a shirt, although I'd stopped short of a tie. Dea had brought an orange dress and when she put it on that evening and did her hair nice, my god, she was about the most beautiful looking thing I'd ever seen in my whole entire life. I, on the other hand, had a creased shirt. Still,we went to that restaurant and I was as pleased as anything to have this girl on my arm. I knew all of the other men in that restaurant were jealous of me, I had the most stunning girl in the room, and everyone knew it. The fact that everyone else in the room was over the age of sixty, besides the point.
On our way to the restaurant we had been accosted by one of the ship's photographers, who asked if we would like to have a our photo taken. We thought we should, and stepped in front of the camera, only to then find ourselves in the midst of a prolonged photoshoot. I was asked to put my arms around Dea, turn to the right, chin up, then another with me sitting, Dea with her arms around me, and so on. The results, which were available for sale in the photography studio on board we would later see were very impressive, but a little out of our budget to actually purchase. So instead, for your viewing pleasure, here is one we took in our cramped cabin with my bad camera on timer:
On the morning of the 11th of April, two and a half days after leaving Sydney, we spotted land. It was New Caledonia. It appeared first as a dark mountainous landscape rising from the sea, but as the ship drew closer the hills emerged as a verdant green sandwiched between the brilliant blue of the sea and the sky. We slipped in between islands towards the capital of Noumea and as we pulled in towards the dock I saw something that I had feared. We were docking alongside a busy container port. At the shore a tribe of traditionally-dressed musicians and dancers performed a welcoming ritual far below as a convoy of buses pulled in behind them. “This is your cruise director Carlos!” came an increasingly familiar, almost annoyingly cheerful voice over the tannoy system. “We have arrived in Noumea, New Caledonia. You cannot walk through the port area today, but don't worry, we have provided a complimentary shuttle service from the ship into the centre of Noumea!” It looked like I was staying onboard then.
With Dea being a normal person, and therefore quite okay with using complimentary shuttle services, she went into Noumea without me, and I spent another day on board the MS Noordam. An hour or two after Dea had gone I was sitting out on deck, probably eating a dessert, when I watched another cruise ship arrive. This one docked on the far side of the container port, in an area where the passengers were able to walk off their boat. I watched them with something like jealousy. Unbeknownst to me, Dea had been wandering down that way, and she got a close up view of the ship arriving to their own traditional performers.
That afternoon Dea returned. She told me Noumea had reminded her of Cuba, which was good because having been to Cuba before I hadn't missed anything. And we'd be stopping again on another island of New Caledonia in the morning anyway. We planned to take our bikes off the boat and cycle on this island, to visit a beach and some caves.
“It's going to be such a great day tomorrow” I said, “And then the day after we'll be in Vanuatu, which will be even better, and then Fiji, and Hawaii!”
“So many good things ahead of us.” Dea agreed.
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