Well, we survived our ridiculously long trip to New Caledonia. We left the house on Tuesday around 10:30am, flew to Houston, then to Auckland, and finally arrived at our apartment in Noumea, the main city in New Caledonia, around noon on Thursday. It was a long trip but luckily we both got some sleep on the flight. There’s a 15 hour time difference between here and the east coast. We were also fortunate that the airport lounge in Auckland had shower facilities, so, all things considered, we were at least somewhat refreshed when we arrived in Noumea in our comatose state.
Our apartment is pretty nice! It has an amazing view of the harbor. Here are some pictures.
We walked along the water looking for a place to have lunch but the entrees were all between $25 and $30 .It seemed a little steep for lunch. So we fell back on our old standard and went to the supermarket for bread, cheese and cold cuts and enjoyed a “picnic lunch” at the apartment.
After a brief rest we walked over to the marina. We were hoping to do the chart briefing tomorrow, but the base manager made it very clear that we couldn’t do it until Saturday. The boat wasn’t back from the prior charter yet, but he assured us it would arrive by morning. We were at least able to get some logistical questions answered and plan to wait until Saturday morning for the boat and chart briefings.
Then we walked around the town. It’s a sleepy little town that appears to be a little run down. Here are a couple of pictures.
We came back to the apartment, relaxed for a little while and headed back to the grocery store to buy food for dinner and breakfast. We were very tired, but managed to stay up until 8pm before crashing.