Rick woke up early as he usually does, sat in the cockpit and watched the turtles and the fish doing their things. There were areas in the water, about 6 ft in diameter, where we could see fish thrashing about to escape and engage each other with gulls hovering and diving in to pick up the spoils. Yesterday there were three large fish, maybe 3 ft long, hanging around the boat awaiting any morsel that escaped our decks.
Whatever they are they were they were clearly out for food. There was a lot of thrashing and the fish were partially jumping out of the water. Then the area would become calm and the thrashing would start somewhere else.
The water is amazingly clear. We are anchored in about 20 ft of water and we can see the bottom clearly. We saw our anchor dug into the sand. I even saw a ray swimming along the bottom. Multiple turtles live in the bay. They pop their head up every 5 minutes of so, take a couple of breaths and head back down. One of them seems to have a plastic bag stuck on his rear flipper, sad!
At around 7AM we put the motor on the dinghy and headed into town. A cruise ship was anchoring out beyond the bay, so we decided we should get into town before they started unloading passengers. We had read there was a bakery and we were hoping to get some decent croissants. We beached the dinghy tied up securely. Here are some pictures of the bay and the beach.
We talked to a gentleman walking up the beach who told us where the bakery was and implied that the bakery was not open to the public but supplied bread to the island’s restaurants and grocery stores. We walked towards the bakery just to check it out.
Everyone is very friendly. While walking to the bakery a dozen cars passed us and everyone waved and smiled at us. We never made it all the way to the bakery. After about 1 km we decided to turn around and went to a hotel along the water for breakfast. They had a buffet so we decided to try it. We ate a lot because the breakfast was expensive and we wanted to get our money’s worth. After breakfast we walked into town to the dock where the tenders were dropping off their passengers. Lots of people. Here is a picture of some men in traditional costumes dancing for the cruise ship passengers.
There is a very narrow piece of land in town with a beautiful harbor on the other side. If the wind shifts to the west while we’re here we’ll move other there. Here are pictures of it.
After a little exploration we returned to the boat. We decided we wanted to rent a car tomorrow so we could explore the rest of the island. I called several car rental companies and they were all booked up for the weekend. Next week is school vacation so a lot of people are coming down to Ile des Pins with their families. Our guide did not give us the names of scooter rental companies so we decided to go back into town to work on a scooter rental. We went to the hotel where we had had breakfast because we read on the internet that they rented scooters. They didn’t but the nice lady at the desk called the scooter rental company and reserved a scooter for tomorrow morning.
One of the things we want to do while on this island is get more diesel fuel. All the other places we have been were completely deserted, no restaurant, no gas stations, no nothing. Our friend at the hotel told us where the gas station was so we walked there to check it out. The station was closed for lunch but we determined that it was too far to carry the full 20 liters (5 Gallons, 40 lbs a piece) canisters of diesel so we need to figure out a plan B.
Along our walk we talked to several people from the cruise ship. They had left Sydney on Sunday and arrived in Noumea on Tuesday and reached the Ile des Pins this morning.
We returned to the boat to relax and write the blog. We considered going back into town for dinner but decided we should eat leftovers instead. We relaxed for the afternoon,reheated leftovers for dinner and enjoyed the sunset.
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