Cote est

Easter in New Caledonia provides a three day weekend, so we took advantage of it and went exploring with the car. Seeing as we finally have a car, and a super fuel efficient one at that…why not?

Looking out onto the water rather than looking onto land. Seeing a coast from the other side is a nice change... eh?

We crossed the island from west to east… only about 30 kilometer wide is fairly quick even with the narrow roads and hills. We arrived in Thio (pronounced Tio), where we found a small village with architecture from the late 19th and early 20th centuries: small homes, bright colors, metal roves, and little gardens.

We headed south and hiked down to the beach, where we met a mother and her children searching for crabs, muscles, and clams to have for dinner.

I found lots of lovely shells. The highlight of beach and probably the afternoon for me was the discovery of a BLUE STARFISH. Check this guy out, so beautiful and so blue!


Cote Est - East Coast

We then hiked back to the car, and JP wanted to continued south to see how far our little car would get us before the road would necessitate a 4X4. Then the plan was to head north again to find a place to camp.

On the way we picked up a local hitchhiking. OK, OK this is normally a bad idea, but as this is fairly sparsely populated area, public transit is non-existent, so hitching a ride is pretty normal. This man looked quite respectable and older. He works in Noumea and was heading home for the holiday weekend. When we picked him up he had walked all the way from the nearest town (15 kilometers) of very hilly winding roads and had another 20 to go. Needless to say he was happy for the ride. We mentioned we were looking for a place to camp. He told us the campground we were thinking about is almost always full and recommended another campground just past where we would drop him off.

The directions we were given were to look for a board with a camping sign, turn and you will end up near the beach. We continued until the road literally ended at the beach. A lovely spot to camp, but as this is all tribal land, one cannot just camp without permission. So we backtracked and confirmed that the only board in view was declaring independence. This did not bode well for camping, as in “Hi, how are you?, Oh, you want to kick the French out. Oh, that’s nice. Can we stay on your land?” We didn’t think that would go over well either, so as we still had some twilight left asked the first person we saw for some clarification on the aforementioned directions. That worked out, and we found the spot. It turns out the camping sign is literally right in front of the beach after you have driven though a small hamlet, community meeting grounds, and beyond some houses. We were greeted by a terribly friendly and rather drunk gentleman who made some sense in his explanation of where he wanted us to camp. He was happy to accommodate us and the car. It was quite a site to see JP trying to follow is directions of where to put the car in relation to where we would put the tent. Twingo’s are small, but palm trees, rocks can still make parking a challenge make for an interesting obstacle course. We crashed out early and realized in the middle of the night we were missing the local party we discovered through the music which played all night. So maybe the proprietor’s lugubrious mood made a little more sense.

The next morning we went north towards Canala. This necessitates passing through a 13 kilometer stretch of road which is only one way. If you want to go north you go on odd hours and south on even hours. We timed it just right making it through the pass just as the clock struck noon only to discover no one was waiting on the other side.

Canala was our first to the northern province of New Caledonia. It is mostly tribal land with little development or industry. The majority of the inhabitants are Kanak who live in a traditional manner of subsistence farming within a tight knit family and tribal community. 20 years ago there was a great deal of political turmoil for independence. At the moment things are quite and people are very friendly. To visit tribes requires a visit to the chief and the presentation of a gift.

We took out time exploring some waterfalls, and then headed up to the hot springs north of town. They were developed several years ago by the local Marie (Mayor), but because of tribal disputes over whose land it is they have fallen into disrepair. Not the prettiest place, but it did have the old façade left from when it was a “hospital” using the thermal for there healing properties. The enjoyed the warm sulpher springs even if it wasn’t as inviting as it has once been.

Canala has the regional high school and a very large grounds for the Marie which boats many beautiful carvings as you can see.