Cruise Day 8

Noumea, New Caledonia
Walking Tour of Noumea
This place is traditional French outpost. We just decided to get off the boat, and wander around - originally we really wanted to go on the 'Le Petite Train', but unfortnately if you didnt book it through the boat ($50 per head!), instead of the standard $20 per head, you couldnt go. Bummer.

We got over that pretty quickly, wandered up towards the centre of the city, and found a really nice park. Wandering further up the hill away from the port, we found a walking trail (which happened to be also marked on our tourist maps!). We followed that around a lot of the older parts of the city, which seemed to be big around mid 1800's. We found a fantastic bag store, which had leather satchells for around $300 - that being said, the woman was sitting in the shop making them, and they had some of the most fantastic soft leather I've seen in a bag.

Tjibaou Cultural Centre
We finally tired of wandering aimlessly, managed to buy ourselves a drink (in french!), and tried to find the number 2 bus. It wasnt too hard, and we ran into a couple of people from our boat - and we all decided that it would be much easier to all go on the bus together! After a short wait, the aforementioned bus arrived, and 25 minutes later, we were out at the Cultural Centre.

There was a fantastic amount of stuff out there, lots of the aborinal art works, and sculpture. We also managed to order a coffee, and chicken sandwich (in french!). Very cool. Who ever said that year 10 French was a waste time?! ;)

Pacific Sun Debacle
We saw the sister ship to ours sitting at the docks in Noumea - and noticed that it was a bit strange. We ran into some of the passengers, who told us that they'd been stuck there for a day already - the ship had broken down. We later found out that the ship was repaired, went to Isle of Pines, and broke down. It was then towed back to Noumea, and everyone sent home. Bugger.

$50 jumper
In the afternoon, we rested, and ventured back out to Noumea - to see the other half of the city we didnt see in the morning. Wandered through Chinatown, and saw chinese people speaking French. Weird. We found a fancy kids clothing shop, which had woollen jumpers (in the tropics?). We converted, and the prices were pretty expensive, but found a bunch of sale items, marked as 50% off. Luckily we picked up a really nice woollen jumper for Jude for $25 (which is still expensive!).