Outstanding Ouvea!
Bamboozle
Jamie and Lucy Telfer
Wed 5 Aug 2015 03:41
20:42.882S 166:26.244E From Noumea we made our way slowly southeastwards along the coast of New Caledonia. The weather wasn’t especially helpful so we hopped down the coast stopping at a number of quiet anchorages and on down to the Isle of Pines. This is a lovely island which we had visited ever so briefly (two days!) back in 2007 during our final weeks on Savoir Vivre. We hadn’t realised that despite being just inside the tropics New Caledonia does have some sort of winter and we were right in the middle of it! We spent a couple of weeks exploring and tucked up safely in Kuto and Kanumera Bays subject to the dreaded “enhanced trade winds” interspersed with grey wet westerlies bringing cold (yes cold!) air up from NZ and the Southern Ocean. We are not used to needing a duvet on board so decided to head a little further north to see if we could find some warmth in the Loyalty Islands to the north and east of “Grande Terre”. We had heard good reports of Ouvea but even we were surprised not only by how lovely the place is but how much of it we had to ourselves.  This picture doesn’t require a great deal of explaining……Ouvea has 30 miles of white sandy beach, incredible gin clear turquoise waters and hardly any other boats.  Heading off to explore on our comedy folding bikes. They may look a bit funny but we can cover some serious miles on these little beauties. Lucy is still working on full rehabilitation of her hip after her op back in January and cycling is apparently one of the best things she can do to help make a full recovery so every other day we set off up and down the remarkably good tarmac road that runs the length of the atoll. The locals clearly thought us quite mad as we zoomed past again and again waving and shouting a cheery “bonjour” with baguettes and any fresh fruit and veg we had managed to track down on our travels hanging out of our panniers.  Taking a break from another hard day in the saddle! Notice the stick in the basket of the right hand bike to ward off the unwelcome attentions of some of the local dogs. The local people on the other hand seemed extremely friendly…..much more so than we had been lead to believe.  Selfie time on our private beach!!!  Hot, sweaty, nervous and not really very sure what I am getting myself into. Our water-maker membranes developed a leak which I fortunately discovered before it sprayed salt water all over the engine room. I had the required spare part but was rather worried, not so much about pulling the system apart but more about managing to get the whole thing back together again and able to operate at the extremely high pressures involved without leaking. Amazingly all went according to plan which was lucky, as without it, our time in Ouvea would have been severely curtailed. We have become a bit soft over the years and the idea of cruising for long without lots of fresh water is not very appealing!  Where is everybody? |