North-west to Koumac

Travel date 17th August 2009
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We left Gite du Cap about 10 am and slowly negotiated the road back to the highway. It was a little easier knowing what to expect this time.

We headed north-west up the west coast. The land was mainly flat and scrubby towards the water on the left. To the right the flat grazing lands quickly became high hills; to Australian eyes the hills were high and steep, with pronounced sharp ridges. Occasional farmhouses, set well back from the road, appeared but they were far apart. For long distances the land seemed deserted except for occasional grazing animals; mainly cattle, some horses, occasional goats and rarely sheep. There were very rare fields of crops, most of the land appeared to be used for grazing or fallow. On the whole trip we never saw a farmer or grazier working in the fields. Maybe they knew I was coming, with my notorious black thumbs - everything I plant is doomed…

We saw several “tribu” signposts, but rarely saw a hint of a Melanesian village. They must have been set well back from the road. Later in the trip the villages were much closer to the road on the east coast. Unfortunately we had made no prior arrangements to meet villagers, so that was one part of the trip that I would do differently if I visit New Caledonia again. Arrangements need to be made in advance with the village elders. All of the road signs, such as river names and villages, were in two languages: French and Melanesian.

The small towns we passed through were very small indeed. We ate lunch at this snack place, operating from a transportable building in Pouembout. I followed the lead of the other customers, choosing a table and chairs from stacks near the servery. We didn’t realise until later what a rare opportunity for an inexpensive lunch that was. In the next five days we saw only one other similar rural snack café, in Oeugoa.

Next door was a typical Mairie, effectively the Town Hall and Civic Office. This was the main street, at peak hour. Well, I doubt it was any different any other time of day.

During the day we noticed this wind-farm on the hilltops. The propellors are smaller than the usual wind generators I have seen in the past, and only two-bladed. Later we saw another farm in the Plum district with slightly larger propellors.

Kone was slightly larger. Significant towns, such as Poembout and Kone, had excellent basic infrastructure regardless of their small populations. Each town had a school, to at least Primary (Elementary) level, a Mairie, a Gendarmerie and a supermarket or two. The size of the school populations, seen playing as we passed, indicated that there were significant feeder villages beyond the towns. Many of the towns also had a smaller Catholic Primary School similar to those in Australia. Almost every town had an Ambulance station with several vehicles in the yard. During the trip we regularly encountered ambulances with their distinctive six-pointed blue crosses, sometimes with blue lights flashing but more often just cruising along the road. Many were sedan cars with no apparent medical equipment. I suspect that they double as the local taxi services, because we saw very few taxis outside Noumea but lots of ambulances.

In Kone we took the opportunity to visit a small supermarket and buy some basics; wine, coffee, teabags, cheese, onions, light cola and butter. Later we found those little purchases to be wise. Some of the little things we take for granted in Australian motels and hotels are missing in the majority of New Caledonian rural hotels and gites. Some provide tea and coffee, but most do not; most don’t even provide a jug to boil water. Some provided a fridge, most didn’t. One tip: never, ever, buy the cheapest French wine on the shelf in New Caledonia; spend at least XPF800; it took days for my taste buds to recover from the one swallow of XPF295 soldes (Sale) merlot. On the other hand, it probably cleaned my tubes out.

After long experience, when I am travelling by car I travel “prepared” with a small electric skillet. It is a very, very useful item, able to do everything from boil water for a cuppa to cooking a full meal of Pasta Bolognaise; which we did later in the trip. I also carry a couple of plastic plates, cutlery, a stopper for wine bottles, a waiter's corkscrew and a one-cup coffee drip filter. We used those items more regularly travelling Grand Terre than I have in any other country.

When we reached Koumac we spent some time exploring and did a little more grocery shopping. Joan of Arc seems to be a very popular saint in the Pacific, this was the third church I saw dedicated to her.

We spent a little time looking for a reasonable hotel and an inexpensive restaurant. We found both to be rather optimistic goals. Eventually, I found one that looked good but could not find any staff. The cashier in the grocery store next door advised us that it was closed for renovations and gave us directions to the Monitel, which we had passed on the road in without realising it was there.

The logic behind the secret hotels of New Caledonia escapes me. Maybe there is some deep and shameful stigma to admitting you actually rent rooms by the day in this country. In this case the “Monitel” sign was a white-on-black 60cm square discreetly positioned on a side road and totally invisible from the main road. By this time we were starting to worry about sleeping in the car so we booked in. The hotel was acceptable but we still had not come to terms with the high prices in NC. There seemed to be two tiers of accommodation in the rural areas: moderately priced but really grotty or very expensive for a level we would expect in a budget Australian or American motel. I gradually learned that New Caledonian hotel prices are simply very high; so by New Caledonia standards it was OK for XPF 9,700 (AU$140, US$115). But to me it seemed rather poor value for money.

Of course, after we had booked in and went driving around town again we discovered the cheaper Hotel Clef - but that’s life. C’est la vie. We were surprised to find that our hotel was almost full, despite the price. Later, watching the people around me as I had a quiet beer I realised that the hotel probably had an account to accommodate many of the workers in the nickel mines. We ordered a pizza and ate in the room; sadly, we discovered that the French, whether Continental or in the Pacific, still have a way to go when it comes to cooking good pizza.

Later we drove around the district and discovered a modern marina with some very nice nearby houses on the coast near the town.

Nickel mining has been, and is, a major economic support for the New Caledonian economy. Unfortunately that has come with a high visual and environmental price. It is almost impossible to drive ten kilometres without seeing another hill or mountain with long strips or scars of denuded hillside. The one in the photo is typical in the Koumac district. Some are just a small strip, others denude entire hillsides, others, as I will show when we reach Poro, are a lunar landscape. Everything has a price, but I suspect that in years to come some New Caledonians will look back on this as too high a price to have paid.

Cheers, Alan

Bourail and Gite du Cap

Travel date 15th August 2009
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The road north from La Tontouta follows the west coast through small villages. After leaving the Europcar office we decided not to stop until we reached Bourail because today was the annual Foire de Bourail; roughly equivalent to our local RAS Show Day. We will be taking a little longer to see La Foa and Boulouparis on the return journey.

The smaller villages such as Moindou were hardly noticed as we passed through. That is really the first thing you realise as you leave Noumea and start driving through Grande Terre; the place seems almost empty away from Noumea. To put that in context, the entire population of New Caledonia is a little over 230,000 and over half of those people live in Noumea. The next largest city on Grande Terre, the big island, is Bourail with 4500. Over the next few days we realised that a significant number live away from the main roads in the Melanesian villages, but even so the land seems almost deserted.

We were too late at the Bourail Fair to see the rodeo acts but we really wanted to see the people rather than the acts anyway. First, of course, after a long drive we had to inspect this uniquely French institution. Unisex and pay your 50 francs in advance.

The crowd was fairly evenly mixed between those of French ancestry, many of whom would not have looked out of place in the crowd at an Australian country town Show, and those of Kanak descent. As I mentioned earlier many of the young Kanak men seemed to be followers of Bob Marley or at least admired Rastafarian garb and hairstyles.

Many of the Fair exhibits and side shows were straight out of similar shows in my childhood, but the fast food was very different and so were some of the artisans and craft displays.

There were two gambling stalls which were doing well; not surprising when you look at the wobbly "chocolate wheels" they were using.

Everything seemed expensive, something we slowly came to realise was true of all of New Caledonia.

I didn’t try the Paella, although it smelled good, but I did have a home-made ice-cream concoction that tasted of marzipan and probably sent my blood glucose levels sky high. But hey - I’m on holiday, so I‘m only testing occasionally. My excuse is that it was meant for Lorraine but she didn’t like the taste so I wasn’t going to let it go to waste.

We had a quick glance at Bourail, a hilly small town, after leaving the fair but didn’t tarry because we were a bit uncertain about finding our bungalow at the Gite du Cap.

I later reflected on what a wise decision that was. The instructions were quite clear: proceed 22 km from Bourail on the Kone road, note the Pont du Cap bridge, watch for the green sign and turn left off the highway at the top of the hill and follow that road for 8km. What wasn’t clear was that no person in their right mind would drive a tiny front-wheel-drive Peugot 107 along that particular unsealed, corrugated and poorly maintained road. The pictures don’t do credit to the steepness of some of the sections; I had to use a lot of my old driving experience for a couple of the climbs to build up momentum before hitting the slope.

The bungalow seemed almost new and was excellent and roomy, although the bed was a little lumpy. The views were superb, almost making the road experience worth-while.

We had advised in our booking email that we would not be dining at the table d’hote because of the price of XPF4500, or AU$63 - each! As we were already paying XPF8600 for the bungalow we felt that to be a bit too much. One reason we booked the bungalow was the fully equipped kitchenette; in our haste to get there we had failed to buy meat and veges, on the assumption that we would be able to buy some from our host. That turned out to be a false assumption; she had provided, in the fridge some eggs and bread for breakfast but was only interested in providing value-added food for dinner, so I had fried eggs and ham and Lorraine had a cup-a-soup.

A friendly guy who appeared to be a permanent resident, and who had acted as interpreter when we arrived, informed us a little later that there would be a fireworks display at 7:30 or 8:30 depending on when “the mother of my child” arrived. We thanked him for letting us know and sure enough, at about 7:30, there was a very brief but quite spectacular display. Just after we went to sleep, at about 9:30, there was another, much longer, much louder display. Very impressive for a small country farm; I hope the mother of his child was suitably impressed. I didn’t really mind; it was certainly better than the French TV.

Next, to the Nord-Ouest.

Cheers, Alan

New Caledonia; Noumea

Travel date 15th August 2009
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I'll return to my 2008 trip shortly. I still have to write about Egypt, the UK, USA and Mexico.

But now for a brief diversion to a touch of France in the South-West Pacific, not all that far from my place. I had some frequent flyer miles to use and wanted to take Lorraine somewhere a little exotic but not too far in distance.

On Australian TV we see many advertisements for places like Fiji, Bali, Vanuatu and New Zealand but rarely any mention of New Caledonia. So I decided to give it a try.

We left Brisbane on time with Qantas and a tailwind. We arrived five minutes early at at 17:25 at La Tontouta. Qantas staff were excellent as usual. A reasonable lunch of chicken korma and rice, minus the rice for me, at 3pm and a free, quite pleasant, shiraz.

La Tontouta Airport is about 50km north of Noumea and appears to be undergoing renovations. We were honest in our Customs and Quarantine declarations and had no dramas, although they did confiscate some cheese we had packed for snacks. The ATM worked with no problems, so, flush with giant-sized New Caledonian Pacific Francs I found the Europcar office and collected our wheels for the next 8 days.



The light had faded quickly and by the time we left the airport at 20 past 6 it was darkest night. We had intended arriving at the Anse Vata Motel before 7pm but it quickly became clear that was impossible. The owner's directions of "just follow the bus" turned out to be a bit useless. It probably helps if you actually see a bus. It might also have helped if the motel has a sign that was visible from the road. Eventually we found it, long after the doors were closed at 7pm. It seemed a bit odd calling the place a “motel” when there was no on-site parking; we eventually found a free street parking spot in the next block. The good news was that the code he gave us for the front door worked.

We had a surprisingly pleasant and tasty dinner of hamburgers (I tossed the bottom bun) at the Rimbu Cafe down by the water; they also sold us a couple of eggs for us to cook for breakfast the next morning. The motel had a small kitchenette but the fridge was empty. The basic burgers were 550 francs, about AU$8 which was very inexpensive for Noumea.

The room wasn’t bad for a basic motel; plenty of space, a double bed and a single, a TV that had only French-language channels, a kitchenette and working hot water. Such a pity that the mattresses were made in a quarry - they made rocks seem soft - and every movement of the upstairs neighbours could be traced either from the footsteps on our ceiling or the plumbing noises echoing in our bathroom.

In the morning I didn’t get upset when the manager asked if I had a pleasant night, but I did tell the truth. Maybe it was my bleary unslept eyes that caused him to do the right thing and reduce the tariff. To his credit, I didn’t ask for a discount; he offered it. He claimed we were the first to ever complain. I doubt it.

We spent a couple of hours next morning checking out other places to stay when we return to Noumea in a week and also buying some basics such as bread, eggs, cream, butter and diet cola from an Asian supermarket open on Sundays.

Noumea was a surprisingly modern city, very French in its style. The traffic lights, road system and shops could have been lifted straight from the Riviera and dropped here in the Pacific. However, the palm trees and the well-tanned local complexions were a reminder of our locality.

The younger Melanesians appear to be suffering a geographical identity problem. It would be easy to mistakenly presume we were on a Caribbean Island from the number of young people wearing dreadlocks, Rastafarian green, gold, red and black woollen knit berets and Bob Marley T-shirts. Michael Jackson is a close number two in the T-shirt popularity stakes.

We wandered around Noumea for a little while, just exploring. Well, that’s what I told Lorraine. Actually I was trying to find my way to the La Tontouta road and kept getting lost. Serendipitously we stumbled on a look-out with marvellous views in all directions over the city; there was a restaurant at the spot but it was much too early for them to be open so we had the place to ourselves and the proprietorial cat.





I finally found the road to the north and headed off towards Bourail. We’ll be returning to Noumea before we go home for a longer look.

We were a bit surprised to find that the toll for our trip north was half the price of the trip south. Maybe it is cheaper on Sundays, or maybe our collector the previous night had a tip.

En-route to Bourail I decided to drop in on the Airport again to find out why the air-conditioner didn’t work. Apparently it was just the on-off switch. This is the highly technical Europcar repair:



The manager said there were no other cars in our size for a swap. Heavy hints about a free up-grade to a larger car with a working air-con apparently did not translate into French. I also took the opportunity to visit the ATM again. The prices in Noumea had caused a rapid revision of the budget.

At least I will know how to find the rental car car-park when we return to it next week; it only took me three circuits around the loop road to find it this time.

Next, Bourail and beyond.