Friday today - Coral on marina – SubZero –men & women – Duclos – cartrip – Yate – Apa Lagi - 2XS partytime - Ile Des Pins

At the top of the gangplank to our arm of the Port Moselle marina, there is a large oozy stinkpipe. And all around this pipe is – a profusion of coral and a thriving little colony of colourful little fish!

I have been made more aware as time goes by on this trip that…men and women are very different. For example, I told Pete about the sign in the women’s shower facilities, which says, in beautifully executed French:

“Due to recent complaints, we have now instituted a rule regarding couples who want to shower together. This is not permitted in the women’s facility. Couples who wish to do this must do this in the male facility.”

Pete blinked a bit, and asked why I thought his notice had been put there. “Well,” I explained, “women don’t really want men in their shower area.” He thought for a moment and said, “But wouldn’t men feel the same, about having women in their area? Ummm…oh no so they wouldn’t…we really are very different creatures…”

Yesterday we were parked outside a pharmacy, looking at a larger-than-life poster of a beautiful, sumptuous maiden with long flowing locks cascading over her bountiful bosom down to her waist. I thought, “What nice hair, I wonder what shampoo she is advertising.” Pete, Nick and Steve examined the poster with rapt attention, and said, almost in unison, “That girl needs a haircut!”

I went into the pharmacy to buy some new shampoo on the strength of the poster. I had actually bought a beautiful big and expensive bottle of anti-frizz-in-the-tropics shampoo in Warringah Mall, and left it very carefully on the floor in the shower facility the day before… So I needed a new one – I hope whoever found it really appreciates the luxury and expense! The pharmacist was a delightful woman, who told me she was “desolee” (ie desperately sorry) that the weather was so bad. It is in fact quite horrid, cold (well, 16, which isn’t what you expect on a tropical island,) and drizzly. I said we were having a perfectly nice time in spite of the weather, which was quite true, and asked if she knew of any public toilets nearby. “Come with me!” she said, proudly, taking me to a beautiful little locked toilet area and handing me a neat little bag with a key and my very own roll of toilet paper. (People here are very nice.)

We had a very long day in the car… We didn’t really have a plan, just wanted to explore a bit more of New Caledonia than inner Noumea. So off we went, with Steve in the front, with The Map. We went through some posherella suburbs, then through an enormous industrial estate called Duclos, which was a nightmare to negotiate for poor Driver Pete but which all of the men found quite fascinating. They tried to guess what each huge warehouse was selling, and what its Australian equivalent would be. (I hate industrial estates even more than shopping malls so my input was minimal.)

And then we headed for the mountains and the village of Yate on the other side. There is a lot of mining (New Caledonia produces 25% of the nickel in the world) and maybe this accounts for the extreme erosion n the mountains. It was very distressing, actually. The mountains are steep, a bit like in the highlands of Vietnam, where everything is terraced and productive. In New Caledonia there were no villages, no farms, orchards, just mountains with very thin scrub and great orange trenches of eroding soil washing down into the valleys. We stopped at a large dam and got out to admire its hugeness and steepness, and we stopped at various lookouts so the men could take photos of the erosion and the hills. As we negotiated the many kilometres of potholed, steep, winding road we consoled ourselves with the knowledge that we would be driving back along the coast road, which would be much more pleasant…

But this was not to be. When we got to Yate (we were a bit like the bear who went over the mountain to see what he could see – you may remember that what he saw was the other side of the mountain…) we were very excited – weehee, a settlement! Houses! Humans! Maybe even a shop! Some proper rainforest! And yes we did find a dear little shop, which sold all manner of things, including, to my delight, Nestles Iced Tea, peach flavor, and – even more surprising – Kingston biscuits. The shop keeper was a delightful woman who spoke French very beautifully, and told us that she was desolee that she couldn’t make us a cup of coffee – “la patronne” wasn’t at home and the kitchen was locked. She was also the bearer of bad news – the coast road, she advised, was impassable with a normal little car; it would take us many hours and we probably wouldn’t even get through.

So…the bears went back over the mountain, and it was all fine. Pete negotiated all of the potholes and all of the driving-on-the-right with aplomb and nobody whinged or said are we there yet.

We have had cups of tea with nice people from NSW, Geoff and Cherylle. Their boat is Sub Zero – named for the racehorse – and they have been waiting to get their mast fixed and replaced. We might meet up with them again in Vanuatu; such is the trail of the Grey Nomad Sailor. I asked Geoff, who is a knowledgeable man, about the erosion and he said New Caledonia has been very badly treated by the mining industry and that, really, it is an ecological disaster….

We had a beautiful dinner, cooked by a slightly anxious Steve and Nick. Steve was keen to time everything; Nick just said, “The potatoes can wait!” They prepared delicious veggies (from the nearby market) and fish (from Elizabeth Reef).

I got all dressed up (well I took off my warm weather gear) in my black and white FROCK – the first time I have worn a FROCK for a very long time, because Pete said we were going to take our crewboys to a nightclub. But…did this happen?? NO!! I went back into the cabin and came back up in my nightie (well, Mum’s old green nightie, the one which looks like a maid’s costume in Chile…) Then I went and got changed back again because we were going next door, with our après diner drinks, to visit a newly arrived boat, Apa Lagi, from New Zealand. Andrew and Fiona are still in quarantine so can’t set foot off their boat, but they were very happy to have visitors – all of us, plus Carolina (Poland) and Per (Scandinavia somewhere…) from Per’s boat, Arctic, also newly arrived from NZ. Party time! We left at ten thirty but it took a while to wrest Nick away from a close examination of the back rigging of Apa Lagi…

Steve went straight to bed but Nick, Pete and I played the ipod and danced around the cabin till nearly 2am... Fortunately my ipod dock has very feeble speakers so it was only noisy on 2XS...otherwise I think we would have been very unpopular with our neighbours. Poor Steve; every now and then Pete would throw open his cabin door and sing a burst of I'm A King Bee (Rolling Stones) or You Really Got Me (Kinks.) I was very happy to find that Nick already knew and loved Manu Chau so we played my whole Manu repetroire as well. Steve's suffering was not at an end; Nick suddenly remembered he had FUN THINGS in his cabin and he reappeared with glowsticks for all of us. So Steve had bursts of Pete singing, and whirling glowsticks...

This morning we are heading off for the Ile Des Pins. I think it takes all day to get there; it is about 60 nautical miles away. We will stay there for a few days so no blogs or emails till next week.