Arriving in Noumea was a bit of a culture shock. It was the first time we had seen traffic crossing signals, movie theatres and regular busses for nearly six months and I wasn’t sure if I actually knew what to do with them anymore!
We were also greeted with those other trappings of civilsation – McDonalds ads, litter and people, drunk or passed out in the street in the middle of the day – which made me feel sad for what the ‘first world’ has done.
Once we got over the initial sensory overload we began to explore Noumea and discovered it was quite a funky little town – though a town quite divided in many ways.
The divide is particularly stark when it comes to the shops. There’s the Chinatown area where, in among the junk shops and Chinese takeaways, there are some quite cool, quite affordable little shops. This is where most of the Kanak population seems to shop, and most of the stores are Kanak run. A few blocks away however, is an entirely different world, full of French shops and boutiques for just about every designer label you can think of – with prices to match. These were full of scrawny European girls with no hips, thighs or bums. I picked up a couple of skirts, looked at the size of the waists and put them straight back down again. I checked out a couple of gift shops instead and was gob smacked at the prices. If it had French writing on it, they whacked an extra couple of zeros on, even if it was just a tea towel.
So back to Chinatown it was for Anna! Where I managed to track down some bargains (funky coloured clothes and bits and pieces from a craft market they run by the waterfront) and came away happy. Paddy found all the bits he needed to make a few running repairs on the boat (including a navigation light to replace the one that got munched by the anchor swinging during our last anchoring dance). He managed to hitch a ride out to the industrial side of town with an Australian chap who had gone native and had been living in New Caledonia for the past 12 years. He dropped Paddy off in a rather rough looking part of town with large blocks of ‘projects’ style tenement houses and all sorts of manly industrial type businesses, and told him to ask for Charlie. ‘Charlie’ turned out to be a Kanak guy with a huge afro who didn’t speak much English. With the help of Paddy’s pidgin French and a lot of hand gestures, the two managed to communicate successfully and Charlie made up the fitting P
addy needed for Big Red (our engine’s) heat exchanger. Paddy came back to the boat full of testosterone and pleased with a bloke’s job well done. Meanwhile, I shopped. While we were sorting out the boat maintenance we stayed at the Port Moselle marina for a few days and it was a real novelty for me to be able to step off the boat any time I liked and walk into town, so of course I made the most of it!
While we were there we had the opportunity to listen to some seriously emo radio stations. The formula seems to be; a mournful or angry young woman singing about her dysfunctions in either English or French, to some sort of rock beat. It was the kind of music I probably would have approved of when I was 14 and thought Alanis Morissette lyrics were deep. English swearwords are obviously not so much of a problem here either, because on busses and in the middle of supermarkets you can hear said angry young women belting out ‘eff this’ and ‘eff that’ over the stereo speakers while people cheerfully go about their business, children in tow.
What did strike me though was the lack of any real indigenous music – pretty much everything they play here is either in French or English. Everywhere else we have been there has been a thriving local music scene. Granted, most of it sounded the same (string bands with tea chest basses), but it was always there and the locals were always very proud of it. There doesn’t seem to be anything like that here – or if there is it’s not very obvious (we have only been here for a week though so I admit we may be missing something). There is Kanak music, I have heard Kanak kids listening to it on the side of the road, but it certainly isn’t what they are playing in McDonalds (we only went there for the wifi – honest!). Don’t get me wrong, we have met some lovely, friendly Kanaks and some lovely friendly French folk, but there are a lot of disenfranchised people here.
My French is still rubbish but, between Paddy’s schoolboy French and my phrasebook, we have managed to muddle our way through. It also helps that, on hearing us butcher their language, a lot of people are pretty quick to start speaking to us in English! It has still been a bit of a challenge though – particularly amusing was Paddy and I attempting to read a Chinese menu, written in French with a waiter who spoke no English. The restaurant was nice and clean and the food looked good, so we decided to stick with it and we got there in the end – we even managed to get what we thought we’d ordered!
One of the highlights of Noumea for me is the amazing aquarium they have here. They have live coral reefs and all sorts of amazing fish, sharks, crabs and other critters. The tanks are huge and clear and the fish and coral come in the most incredible colours. They have fluorescent coral and deep sea fish in a darkened room and I got to see what the critters inside those beautiful nautilus shells actually look like. I’m not usually big on keeping animals in captivity, but the spaces the fish were in were large and about as close to their natural environment that you can get. They did have sharks, but they were only little reef ones and they seemed to have plenty of area to swim in. I guess if a set up as well done as this is used to help educate people about these amazing creatures and their environment and help preserve them, then it is a type of captivity I am okay with. I have taken a tonne of fishy photos (they don’t mind as long as you don’t use a flash) which I will bore you all to death with once we get some decent internet connectivity again.
We are going to have to get out of here soon though or the food is going to kill us. Everywhere you look there are patisseries that sell pastries, croissants and all manner of sweet things so beautifully made they are more works of art than food. Then there is the fact that they put chocolate in absolutely everything – even their cornflakes have little curls of chocolate in them! Our real problem is of a more savory variety though. In a word – cheese. Cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese – it’s everywhere, it’s cheap, there are more than 370 different types of it and it goes really well with the ham, salami, fresh bread and cheap red wine that is also everywhere.
When I first got here I was genuinely puzzled at how the local women managed to stay so skinny when surrounded by so much lovely food, but after a couple of days I managed to work it out. They smoke. Everyone smokes – everywhere, all the time. There are ashtrays on the tables in the restaurants, ashtrays in the pubs, even ashtrays in the toilets (in case you have a sudden need for a nicotine hit while you are going for a pee.) One of our fellow cruisers was quite surprised to spot a guy in the marina bathroom having a smoke and a shave simultaneously. I guess you could say it is a national pastime. For me this was like stepping into a timewarp. About seven years ago the New Zealand government banned smoking indoors just about everywhere, and I understand a similar thing is happening in Australia too. This was both a good and a bad thing for me. I don’t smoke, I never have. The fact is cigarette smoke sets off terrible allergies in me and if I smoked I would be allergic to mys
elf! A lot of my friends did smoke however and I guess – though the passive smoking was probably not doing me any good – I built up a bit of a tolerance to it by being around smokers. When they put the kybosh on smoking in pubs it was really great to be able to go home and not have to throw smoke reeking clothes straight into the wash. Unfortunately though an unexpected side effect was that, now I was no longer exposed to it, my tolerance had gone right down and even the slightest whiff of smoke made me feel like I had an army of feather-wielding smurfs running around my nasal passages. So you can imagine how much fun it was for me during my first few days here.
I think my smoke tolerance is building up again though, because I have been able to spend more time in pubs and restaurants without sneezing my head off. This was particularly useful in the marina bar while we were watching the NZ/Aussie rugby match. Neither Paddy or I are rugby heads and we were quietly relieved to be able to avoid the Rugby World Cup craziness back home in New Zealand. We have however watched a couple of the games and there is a bit of a friendly rivalry between the Aussies and the Kiwis in the fleet. I find watching the people watching the game much more entertaining than the game itself (though I must admit I caught myself shouting at the screen a couple of times – I am disgusted with myself and blame my Cantabrian roots) and the crowd watching the last NZ/Oz game was hilarious. There were a lot of nervous French folk who were obviously terrified the All Blacks would win and they would have to play them (their eyes would widen every time there was a shot
of a bloodied player – and it seemed to me that everyone was bleeding at some point during that game!) Then there was the occasional “for eff’s sake!” coming from the Aussie supporters, and similar sound effects from the Kiwis when our lot stuffed up. One of the cruisers had her phrasebook out and was gleefully calling out the new French expletives she had learned, which was also highly entertaining! So, although it was not something I had planned to do, it looks like I will be watching the final. We will be back in Noumea for a clearance briefing and to pick up our crew and I think the people watching opportunities afforded by being here during a NZ/France final will more than make up for having to sit through another rugby game!
We have really enjoyed our time here in Noumea but think we have had our fill of civilization for a bit – so we are about to head off to some of the outer bays and lagoons around here to fill up on some more beauty before we have to think about returning to the real world. It is really hard to believe this is our last country before we head back to New Zealand. We are planning on taking our time and cruising round the Bay of Islands when we get back. That is a part of New Zealand we haven’t really seen a lot of and we are both really looking forward to checking it out.
Thinking of you all back home and looking forward to catching up again soon xx
