A Day in Noumea, New Caledonia

Following my cruise trip to Pacific Islands, I had written about why I found Cruise trips so great. This post is about one of the ports I had visited during the trip, Noumea in New Caledonia. Many of the points I wrote about Mare & Lifou applies to Noumea as well, both being the islands of New Caledonia.

On my 10-day cruise trip to South Pacific, Noumea was the last port. After seeing the beautiful islands of Mare, Mystery Island & Port Vila, I must say I was not too much impressed with Noumea. Maybe because it was the last leg plus the tiredness plus the sunburns plus the less research I performed !

Since I am mostly a last minute traveller (as usual) I had the ticket booked few days before my trip and did not get much time to look up the ports and decide what to do in each of the port days. In other trips, while you can research and plan until the last moment, connectivity in cruise trips limit you from that luxury. Anyways, I left Noumea with a feeling that I have to do this once again!

Noumea, Things you need to know 

French & English is spoken by most of the people. Even though New Caledonia has the currency CFP franc(XPF), AUD is accepted everywhere and change is also returned in AUD most of the places.

With the tropical weather, Cruises operate throughout the year, January & March being the rainy months. Right outside the Port, there is a city center where you can purchase the tickets to Hop on – Hop Off sightseeing tours. Interestingly, “Mc Donalds” was the key item which the tourist agencies kept on highlighting!

Hop On Hop Off tour can be done in half a day, I could not visit the markets as it was closed it being  Christmas. The places I chose to stop by were Lemon Bay, Anse Vata Beach & Duck island.

Anse Vata Beach

The Hop On bus takes you right to the Anse Vata beach in a short ride. Being the most popular beach in Noumea, this thin strip of beach is usually busy. Locals, along with tourists enjoy their time here. The sand is hardly 2 meters away from the water. This long beach with trees along the way is good for a walk and also for dining with the limited, but nice restaurants available along the shore.

I could see topless women on the beach, but could not find any information on whether nudity is allowed there or not!

The Le Meridian Hotel on the shore allows you to use the restaurant, which means you could have a nice beer in the shades set up by the hotel right next to the beach. And definitely “Number One” it being the beer of New Caledonia!

Duck Island vs Amedee – Where to go?

Amedee island is listed in the UNESCO heritage list because of its fascinating varieties of flora & fauna.If you are looking for a place where you could see snakes, turtles & colorful fishes, this is the place.

The tours to Amedee are done by the Mary D company and is not very cheap (usually above 200 AUD). One of the ladies from the Cruise told me that they could find someone through facebook who helped her with arranging the trip for her four-member family for a quarter of the price (since it was after we left from Noumea, I did not check it by myself, so not very certain of the details!).

When you are on a cruise and have only one day to spend in Noumea,  it is not possible to cover both Amedee & Duck Island doing justice to both. In the hindsight, I think I should have visited Amedee instead of Duck Island. However, since I need another reason to go back, that is fine 🙂

Duck Island (Ille Aux Canards Island)

A 5-minute ride in the water taxi takes you to the Ille Aux Canards island aka Duck island. It gets the name ‘Duck Island’ because of its shape ( one of those moments in which I wish I had a drone!).

The first glimpse is of the red shades all across this small island. It is quite small that in 10 minutes you can walk around the island. There were a few bird watchers and a lot of locals chilling out in the hot summer day.

The beach had crystal clear water but a lot of broken coral pieces which makes reef shoes a very good thing to carry!

This spot is famous for Snorkelling and viewing the colorful fishes. However, I did not do snorkeling as the weather was too hot and chose to have a good lunch and relax instead. More details on snorkeling in Duck Island can be found here.

Most of the red shades were already reserved. Later I discovered that it needs to be booked at a fee of  45 AUD for 4 hours and the ticket can be purchased at the restaurant on the island. The only restaurant in the island is not cheap but has got a few options for a meal. I treated myself with a Prawns salad which was just okay. I could spot  a lot of french speaking locals enjoying their get togethers and celebrations.

The only restaurant on the island had few options for lunch. I had a Prawns salad and a cocktail which was good considering the hot weather.

There was an echo/pit toilet( again the only one) which smelled bad and made it impossible to sit on one side of the restaurant. The quirky signs outside the toilet were interesting, though.

After spending a couple of hours I took the water taxi back to the main road and took the Hop On bus back to the cruise terminal.

And that was the end of my last port visit on that cruise trip 🙂

For next time, it will be definitely Amedee since I heard very good reviews from those who visited Amedee. How can I let go an opportunity to see animals in their natural reserve?

Read more about New Caledonia here 

Got more time to spend in Noumea?, How about swimming with Turtles in Signal Island ?

If you are a fan of Audio tours check out Noumea Self Guides Audio Tour.