Thursday
Snorkeling in Baie d’Ugo - Piscine Naturelle – no crayfish for us – back to Noumea – bike ride – Immigration – dinner at La Chaumière – farewell to Steve and Nick - Le Quick

On our last day in beautiful Baie d’Oro (or was it Baie Ugo? The map wasn’t entirely clear on this point…) we crammed a lot of activity into our morning. Pete and I went for a snorkel – Yes, Pete Got Wet!! And he enjoyed it very much. We saw a reasonable amount of coral, and quite a few small and colourful fish. The current was very strong and wanted to sweep us away from 2XS. Well it wanted to sweep Pete away. What it did to me was make me swim entirely in the wrong direction, this way, that way, forwards and backwards but never towards 2XS. We gave up and called Nick to the Rescue. He putt-putted out and towed us home in the tender. Not elegant but…we were very happy for the ride. Nick and Steve were next in for a snork, and then it was time to go and explore the Meriden and its environs. I was the first one in and I was very impressed with the resort. It is just beautiful, with tasteful bures, all replete with an outdoor spa, manicured lawns, fragrant gardens, a beautiful beach. When the men arrived (Three Men in A Boat, very precarious…) we went, optimistically, into the spacious, shady restaurant hoping for a coffee, or a beer. Expensive, but reasonable, as we saw on the menu. The waiter looked at us a bit sadly, and asked us (ahem…) if we were hotel guests. When we brightly said, no, just day-trippers, he whisked the menus away and said, “In that case, you are looking at the wrong one…” and –gasp – on THIS menu a beer was approaching $15, a coffee around #12… We were just not that thirsty!

We had read about la Piscine Naturelle, a short walk from the Meridien, so followed a track through to the other side of the island. A beautiful track, through a thick, lush bit of forest, along a bit of a river, and then – oh how wonderful it was… Indeed as beautiful as promised. We could wade in the shallows with tropical fish nibbling at our toes, and we watched, enviously, as people snorkeled in absolute safety in a large “natural swimming pool” in the sheltered little lagoon. (That night I dreamed, very specifically, that I had won $12million and that I was taking my entire family – it got a bit complicated, my entire family got bigger the more I thought about it – to the Meridien for a fortnight. The logistics were horrendous and I woke up sad but a bit relieved…So hard to organise!!)

We walked back along a different, broader track. And discovered – oh joy – a little beach restaurant, not part of the Meridien, but run by locals, crayfish, chips and salad on the beachfront. I was particularly hungry and ran to ask if we could please PLEASE sit at one of the little tables and eat now now now! But – we didn’t have a booking – if only we had Lonely Planet we would have known this, so a nice South African woman, sitting with a full plate of crayfish before her, told us. You have to ring at 7am on the day to book, no other possibility. So we dragged ourselves away from the people feasting on langouste and went back to a (perfectly nice) meal of leftovers on 2XS as we set off on our way back to Noumea.

Wednesday afternoon Steve and Nick went off to buy presents for their families. They had tried before we left for the Ile des Pins, with no success. Steve had picked up the item he had chosen for Margaret, only to be told, firmly, “we are closing now.” It was siesta time! Pete and I got out the bikes and went off looking for the Immigration office – Pete had to hand in documents with respect to Steve and Nick’s departure. We were so glad to have the bikes; it was a lovely long ride around the waterfront but it would have been a long, hot trudge. We found the Immigration office, hiding a bit coyly behind a fence, and we went – oh no – to the back door instead of the front one. They were both equally discreet. A woman in a purple muumuu glared at us through the door – she had been about to step out for a smoke. And she was not supposed to let us in! Eventually she did open the door, to tell us it was STRICTLY forbidden, we must NEVER do this again. We meekly promised to go to the other door next time and were ushered (“just this once!”) into the front office, where a very mild large back man looked at the documents and said all was well. Phew!

Just as well because our next, not-so-shy, building was the local penitentiary… A large building, with a long, sad queue of women in bright muumuus lining up to visit their loved ones. We weren’t on our way there, fortunately. Pete had espied a sign in the distance saying Marine Corail – this is the local shipchandlers. We had already been to the one in town but you never know what you will find in another one… We also found a sailmaking loft, with some very nice men who offered to come and measure the hatches to make rain hoods – I will let you know how that goes… They said they charge “$35 per hour, and… une tasse de café…

Wednesday night was our last night with Steve and Nick. We wanted to take them to a proper French restaurant, so Pete and I did some research. La Chaumière, we heard, was The Place to go. Pete and I rode our bikes up there, and they were, ofcourse closed for siesta time. I went back up at 5, bravely riding my bike solo through Noumea traffic (not too scary – it is apparently quite OK to veer back up onto the footpath at any time.) They weren’t open but the place next door, which seemed to be connected, had an invitingly open door. “L’Age D’Or,” it was called… The women in there were lovely and very helpful and kind. It was only when we went back there at 6.30 that we found out they are in fact a sort of hospice for the aged and infirm… I hissed, “Please do NOT tell my party of men about this…they think I am taking them to a fancy French restaurant…” They laughed heartily and helped me syphon Pete, Steve and Nick off next door, which was finally opening…

And it was indeed The Place to go. It was run by a posse of large, serious women in an updated style of floral muumuu and the food was – extraordinary! A very French menu – Nick, to his delight, had snails, for the first time. It was also extraordinary in that it wasn’t very expensive – in fact much cheaper than the Café Au Bout du Monde, where the food is not yummy at all. We all had three wonderful courses and some red wine, then made our way back to Port Moselle marina. On the way we stopped to watch the Gendarmerie, the Police and the Armée, rehearsing for their 14th of July parade. All a bit surreal – a few trucks, one tank, a pod or two of young men in kepis marching, plus seven horses being ridden along the boulevard. Such a strange thing, this display of mini-might, way out here…

This morning I got up at 5 to farewell Steve and Nick. Beautiful Virginie the travel agent had booked the airport shuttle to pick them up at 5.30 at the capitainerie. Steve was wanting to leave the boat at 5.15 but Nick and I said, “Relax! We have plenty of time!” We were wrong… I wandered down ahead of them at 5.25, hoping to use the bathroom facilities before they got there, and saw…the airport shuttle, with an impatient young lady on the phone; she was about to go! I ran and said, “No, wait, they are coming!” She was very snippy and said, “Madame, I was to pick them up at 5.15! I have other people to pick up!” Thank God she didn’t drive off; poor Steve and Nick would have had a very stressful time, waiting in the dark at the capitainerie, trying to ring another taxi to get to the airport, which is about an hour away. We didn’t have time for tears; the Shuttle Chick had their cases in the back and their bodies in the front before we had time to blink.

So now it is just Pete and me. We will miss our “boys,” as Pete called them. They have been great company, and a great asset on the boat. I have hardly lifted a finger, with regards to sailing. And they have both rushed to help domestically – cooking, cleaning, washing up whenever they got the opportunity. (I really didn’t think it was fair for them to do all of the sailing AND these domestic chores; I had to be of some use, surely??) I don’t think there has been a cross word between the four of us; this is great, isn’t it, considering we have been very much cooped up in each other’s company. We have seen each other at our worst, dismally ill, (well all except for Capitaine Pete…) tired, cold, hungry, and – worst of all, on the last day – run out of beer!!!. Steve has coped stoically with being kept awake by many repetitions of King Bee (Well I’m a king bee, baby, buzzing around your hive, BUZZ BUZZ); Nick has coped with being with people old enough to be his parents (well Pete and I are; Steve is only 55.) And Pete and I have enjoyed every minute of their lively, interesting company.

We have the most enormous mound of washing to do. All of the bedding and towels, ofcourse, plus lots of clothes. I have tried to wash as I go, but eventually the dirt just builds up and it really is necessary to find a proper washing machine. And…there is no such thing as a laundromat, in New Caledonia. We have to lug our washing to a laundress about a kilometer away. She apparently (Steve, who is very hygienic, had used her services,) has ONE washing machine and ONE dryer and the washing queues up, Island Time, for four or five days. I will let you know how this all pans out.

We went to the Café au Bout du Monde and importantly set up our computers opposite one another. Clickety click and…nothing. Try again – surely the password there is always LUNCH? But…no connection; the system was apparently closed for servicing. I talked to a young French girl, who was also frustrated at not being able to clicketyclick into LUNCH. She has just moved here; is going to live here permanently and work in a restaurant. Big adventure! Anyway, she suggested we go to Le Quick..ie MacDonalds. So here we are, at an outside table; not as salubrious as the Bout du Monde – we are in a sort of busy carpark. And Le Quick is far from quick…I waited in a queue for endless minutes – Island Time. You have to buy something, to be allowed to use WiFi in these places and to get access to the password (the one here is doublechoco…) Pete requested a Sublime Shake which was totally horrid. I had an Angus Burger and an expresso which were both perfectly nice; quite delicious, in fact…