Harmonie - Bad French w/ Pictures - We, Lifou, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia

Bad French w/ Pictures - We, Lifou, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia

Harmonie

Don and Anne Myers

Wed 1 Oct 2008 03:41

Note: This version has pictures attached.

We arrived in the tiny Marina de We Saturday morning (9/6). Picture 1 shows the entire marina - the bow sticking out on the left at the end is ours and the bow sticking even further out on the right at the end is Storyteller's. Shortly after we arrived and before we had a chance to fully exhale, Sue from Storyteller - who willingly falls into the role of tour guide whether she's been to a place before or not - stopped by to announce that she had already found an excellent fish shop, had bought lunch for all of us and because she had no cash and had to pay with a credit card, decided it only made sense to throw in a nice bottle of French champagne as well. Who are we to argue? We arrived at Storyteller at the designated hour and were served fresh fish, champagne, cheese and sliced apples. Welcome to the land of the French. A bit different from our introduction to Vanuatu and the island of Tanna, where we were served roast pig and yams on palm frond plates with no eating utensils.

Yes, New Caledonia is a French colony, a French Overseas Territory to be exact - very similar to French Polynesia (which includes the Marquesas, Tuamotus and Society Islands). The currency here is the same as that of French Polynesia, which, lucky for us, has decreased in value vs. the US dollar since the time we were in French Polynesia. Instead of paying $300 for a week's worth of groceries for the two of us, it seems we'll get away with paying less. Quite a bit less. All good.

New Caledonia is made up of four island groups. The main island, Grand Terre, is the fourth-largest island in the Pacific, surpassed only by New Guinea and the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The barrier reef that surrounds Grand Terre encloses the largest lagoon in the world. The Loyalty Island group is situated about 80 miles to the east of Grand Terre, and is made up of two raised coral islands, Lifou and Mare and one coral atoll, Ouvea. There is another small island group to the north of Grand Terre and a fourth to the south called the Ile des Pins. We are currently on one of the Loyalty Islands, Lifou, and plan to make the overnight sail to the Ile des Pins early next week, followed by a sail to Noumea, the New Caledonia capital on Grand Terre, sometime near the end of September.

Like Vanuatu, New Caledonia was originally populated with Melanesians, but over time they have mixed with the French and Polynesians more than the Vanuatu people have and as a result, look slightly different. Captain Cook was the first westerner to discover New Caledonia, but the country became a French colony in 1853. Starting in 1864, New Caledonia was used by the French as a penal colony, so many of the original French settlers were convicts. This went on until 1897.

The story here is similar to that of most South Pacific island groups. The native population was decimated by diseases brought by the westerners, and as more westerners settled in the area, the natives were pushed off their lands, into compounds and didn't receive equal rights to the French until 1946. Currently, New Caledonia's population is 43% native, 37% European and the rest a mix of Polynesian, Asian and other Pacific Islanders.

Unlike many of the South Pacific islands, New Caledonia has a very valuable natural resource - one of the largest nickel deposits in the world. This, along with lots of money from the French, has made New Caledonia infinitely more prosperous than Vanuatu, which has no great natural resource and is a struggling independent nation. From what we've seen so far though, the people of Vanuatu seem happier than those here. Although Lifou is a small island accessible from Grand Terre by air and sea only, it has good roads, power lines that run coast to coast and a regular stream of supply ships. Almost every family seems to have a car and a satellite dish, and in the town of We alone, we passed not one, not two, but three gas stations. Wow.

Lifou is a raised coral island like Niue and many of the Tonga Vava'u group islands, which means it is flat. Flat with good roads. Our bicycles came out of the back locker for the first time since Martha's Vineyard over a year ago. Aside from flat tires and a little bit of rust from the pervasive salty air, they were fine. Don pumped up the tires and after one ride down a flat road, we both realized that sea legs may work well on a boat, but a major overhaul might be necessary in order to turn our sea legs into bike legs if we ever want to get serious about actually pedaling up a slight incline without having to disembark. Sad, but true.

We spent five days in the We Marina and with Sue as our appointed tour guide, tagged along for rides across the island of Lifou in the blue roller-skate car Storyteller rented (it was much like the blue roller-skate car we rented with the Maloneys on Huahine in the Society Islands - blue roller-skate cars must be a French thing). We covered almost the entire island over several days and stopped at a couple white sand beaches to swim and snorkel. Picture 2 shows Sue marching down to one of the nicest beaches we visited on the southeast side of the island. The waves breaking offshore indicate the position of the barrier reef that protects the beach from the full force of the southeast swell. Within the barrier reef, the dark patches that dot the otherwise turquoise water are coral. Picture 3 shows one of the native boys building his version of a sand castle on the beach. Note that the castle's shape is pretty much like that of a cone and includes no towers or parapets like you might normally see on a sand castle built elsewhere in the world. This is because the traditional New Caledonian home, called a case, is a thatch hut structure shaped - yup, you guessed it - like a cone. Build what you know - isn't that what they say? Picture 4 shows one of the many traditional thatch cone-shaped cases that exist on Lifou. The traditional cases are said to be used as sleeping houses now. This makes sense as more modern, small ranch houses are usually located just a few steps away from the thatch cases on almost every plot of land.

One of our car tours took us to the northwestern side of the island, known for its excellent snorkeling. There was not much of a beach, only a set of rickety wooden stairs leading straight down to the water's edge and the start of the endless coral patches stretching out as far as we could see. The snorkeling was excellent - almost as good as Suwarrow - coral growing in clumps covering most of the bottom, looking a bit like a strange sort of particularly bumpy carpet. All kinds of fish including the tiny translucent blue ones that look like bubbles, some larger scary looking creatures hiding out in the small caves and crevices on the sides of the coral heads near the bottom, and, oh, look at that...the largest white tip reef shark we've seen yet swimming a not-far-enough-away fifteen feet from us. This time even Don was startled by the eight foot size of the thing. Looking out only for myself, I made sure Don was between the shark and I, and then latched on to Don's leg with my hand so he couldn't get far without me. The shark, who didn't seem to be interested in us, turned and swam further away. We did the same, looking over our shoulders as we swam, just to be sure it hadn't decided we were interesting after all. We decided that was enough snorkeling for us that day. Sue wasn't in the water with us at the time, and decided maybe she had enough snorkeling that day also after she heard about our close encounter of the eight foot shark kind.

After that, we stuck to land-based sight seeing and hiked up a short trail to one of the few higher points on the island for this view (picture 5).

In our travels, Sue struck up a conversation (yes, her French is leaps and bounds better than our nonexistent variety) with a local when we stopped to look at the view where the road ended on the southeast corner of the island. The local said if we wanted to come back the next day, he would catch lobsters for us and make us dinner. It sounded like an adventure, so we agreed. The next day, as we got ready, it started to rain - not just a smattering of rain, but the real serious kind of pouring rain. We dug out our umbrellas and walked through the puddles over to Storyteller. John wasn't feeling all that well and with that and the rain, we debated whether we should still go out or not. In the end we decided we would go and Don volunteered to drive us there (first time behind the wheel for Don since we were in Baltimore a year ago). We crammed ourselves into the roller-skate and Don squinted through the fogged windshield in the dark while the rain bucketed down. 'Like a cow pissing on a flat rock' Don is fond of saying in these situations. Luckily he didn't say this out loud as there are only a few people we know in this world that would actually find this analogy amusing - but I know that's what he was thinking as we plowed through the rain in the roller-skate. It wasn't too much later when the rain smashing sideways into the roller-skate made the visibility even worse and we all noticed something ahead of us in the middle of the road. A dog maybe. A really big dog. A really big, slow moving dog. Whoa! It's a cow! Pissing on a flat rock in the middle of the flat road maybe? Don hit the brakes, the cow moved on and we all let out a sigh of relief. After about thirty minutes we made it to where the road ends on the southeast side of the island.

Conveniently, the rain had stopped by then and we piled out of the roller-skate. We weren't entirely sure where the restaurant was since the conversation Sue had with the local took place in a clearing by the beach. We looked around and seeing no signs (signs are a rarity on this island), approached the nearest structure. The place was completely deserted except, surprise!, for the local we had met the day before. He indicated we were in the right place and we stepped into the 'restaurant'. There were about six tables, all covered with plastic cloths and all with chairs set neatly on top. The place was lit by a few blinding florescent lights hanging from the ceiling and a battered portable stereo was playing local music, the CD occasionally skipping so that our host had to whack it now and then to get it going again. Not the most glorious atmosphere, but we reminded ourselves that we were on an adventure. We took the chairs off the top of the table, sat down and asked for some wine. Our host came up with one liter of red wine in a cardboard box. Hmmm....the year of the box - not necessarily our favorite vintage. Never-the-less, we settled in with our glass of red box wine and listened to the skipping CD while our host worked on our dinner in the kitchen. The wine wasn't bad. After a fair bit of time during which there were sporadic pounding noises emanating from the kitchen and several apologies for the wait from our host, our dinners arrived. The two lobsters had been caught that day and the beasts were so huge we each had half. Even the half lobster sprawled over the sides of our plates and looked a little frightening with its extra long legs and antennae sticking out. But it tasted good. Our host hovered over us for a few minutes after we received our dinners to be sure we knew how to deal with the lobster. He also posed with Don, Sue, John and the giant half-lobsters for this picture (picture 6). What the place lacked in ambiance was made up for by the lobster and we decided our rainy adventure turned out to be ok.

We stayed as long as we did in the We Marina because we weren't sure how or when we were going to get checked into immigration. The New Caledonia rules for boaters stipulate that we check into customs in We on Lifou, but must get to Noumea on Grand Terre to check into immigration within 3? 7? days (it was never clear). The trouble with sailing to Noumea is that once you are there, it is very difficult to sail back to the Loyalty Islands or the Ile des Pins as it would be an upwind sail in both cases. Originally, our plan was to fly from We to Noumea, complete our immigration check-in and fly back to We. Unfortunately, our timing was bad as we arrived in New Caledonia during the start of a two-week school holiday. As a result, all the flights between Noumea and We are booked. We deliberated over our dilemma for the first few days as we watched more sailboats arrive from Vanuatu. Eventually, a total of eight boats had arrived, and all were stuck in the same immigration catch-22. In the end, Lulu, the marina/customs guy pulled some strings with the local airline and Noumea immigration and the eight boats were allowed to fly one representative to Noumea to check all of us in. Peter, an English guy off the catamaran Tiger volunteered to make the one-day trip. All went well with one catch. As Americans, we are allowed only thirty days in New Caledonia without the possibility of an extension. Apparently, we were supposed to obtain a visa before arriving here. Strange, since none of the information we reviewed before coming mentioned this crucial fact. Also, a visa was not required before entering French Polynesia and we were there for over thirty days. Leave it to the French to make things difficult. No matter what, we won't be leaving New Caledonia within thirty days because we have to wait for the right weather window for our sail to New Zealand and that won't happen until at least mid-October. So, our new plan is to arrive in Noumea a little ahead of plan (the last week of September), plead our case to immigration and if all else fails, leave the boat for a day or two and fly to Vanuatu or Australia and back to gain another thirty days upon re-entry. Ridiculous, but sometimes you just have to do what has to be done.

Last, but not least - bad French. On Wednesday, one of the two designated weekly market days in We, Sue and I bicycled to the market to buy some fresh fruit and vegetables. Picture 7 shows the market and the women dressed in the New Caledonian version of the Mother Hubbard dress - a bit more colorful than the Vanuatu version and minus the giant pockets and massively puffy sleeves. Once there, Sue went her way with her halting but very well pronounced French, and I went my way with my ten words of really badly pronounced French. Employing hand signals and smiling apologetically as much as possible, I muddled my way through purchases of tomatoes, papaya, bananas and limes (or maybe they were lemons? it's really tough to tell sometimes because a yellow skin could be hiding a green inside and vice-versa). All items are first weighed and then a calculator is used by the seller to tally up the total price. This worked well as I could usually see the number on the calculator and pay accordingly. Unfortunately, the eggplant seller held the calculator in such a way that I couldn't see it as she politely told me the price in French. Not wanting to rudely grab the calculator out of her hand, I decided I would use four or five of my ten French words to let her know that I didn't speak French. When I said the words, she gave me a strange look, showed me the calculator and took my money. It wasn't until later when we were bicycling back to the boat when I realized what I had actually said to the eggplant seller was 'You don't speak French'. The locals I passed probably thought I was just a bit odd - pedaling away on my bike with tiny wheels and laughing out loud to no one in particular.

Anne