October 4, 2019 – Nouméa, New Caledonia

As they say, “early to bed and early to rise”, which is exactly what we did this morning.  We were up at 3:30 AM which is 12:30 PM at home so I guess that’s a good start.  I was able to fall back asleep for about an hour and a half later this morning. Rick was’t so lucky, although he caught a couple of winks later.

After a delicious croissant we headed out around 9:00.  Our first stop was the charter base.  We needed to find some flippers for Rick.  His feet are hard to fit. We would have brought our flippers, but they are too big for the suitcase.  The flippers at the base were not big enough to accommodate his diving booties and the flippers hurt his feet without them.  Luckily a fellow at the base suggested diving socks, so we went to the local dive shop, bought a pair of dive socks and headed back to the base.  Success!  We found flippers that work.

When we arrived we noticed our boat-to-be was at the dock being cleaned. We had a quick walk through.  It’s in good condition and, at first glance, appears to have everything we’ll need.  Here is a picture.

Then we walked through the open markets next to the marina.  They’re open on Friday and Saturday mornings.  Beautiful looking fish and seafood and veggies, if you like that stuff!

We’ll make our purchases tomorrow so we can take it directly to the boat.

Then we went back to the grocery store.  We bought meat for the trip.  The butchers didn’t speak any English so briefly we seemed stuck, but an English speaking lady appeared from supermarket heaven to translate.  It was a bit confusing without a translator because we wanted the butchers to vacuum pack the meat and freeze it in their freezer overnight so we can keep it fresh for at least the next week or two .  We will pick it up tomorrow.  The supermarket is quite large and well stocked.  Here’s a picture of the meat market.

Then we went back to the apartment for lunch and a nap!

In the afternoon we went for a walk.  We went to the phone store to get clarification on our SIM card and data usage.  We also went back to the grocery store to buy water.

We cooked a pizza from the grocery store for dinner and watched CNN.  It was another early night.

Most people here in New Caledonia don’t speak English.  That surprises me because most of the tourists who come here are from New Zealand or Australia.  I guess their lack of dependence, or maybe interdependence, with the outside world, relative to most of the other places we’ve visited, keep the locals a bit linguistically isolated.  So far we have managed to work around most of our language issues, proving you can almost sign anything.  The woman at the supermarket yesterday said just that.  The butchers had a pretty good idea of what we wanted them to do with the meat without her assistance.  Nevertheless, it reassuring to know ones thoughts have been accurately conveyed.