Ile Des Pins, New Caledonia

This is our favorite port to date! Located southeast of Noumea, it is often nicknamed "the closest island to Paradise". It was named by Capt Cook in 1774 after he saw the native pine trees that grew there. He never actually landed on the island.

We got off the ship at about 9:30. It was a tender port, so we boarded the tender for a 15 min ride to the pier. From the ship all we could see was a pier and beaches, nothing else! Once on the island, we could see little else either. We asked where we could snorkel and were pointed down a road, then thru a small woods to a beach on the other side of the narrow peninsula. There were about 5 or 10 people there when we arrived. We put on our gear and headed out. There was a large rock/island just off shore, with several other rocks near by. You could see by the darkness of the water that that was where the coral was. We had to swim about 30 ft to be in a coral forest! It was amazing, I'd never seen anything like it. It was like swimming in an aquarium, there were so many fish and the water was so clear. We saw yellow, purple, blue, orange and other colored fish. Some were black and white, some angel, other long and clear. The coral was glowing lavender at the tip of each "branch". I guess that's what it looks like when it's alive. Just beautiful. We swam around the large rock then went to the beach for a bit. We walked toward a thatch roofed building that we could see. It was the bar of a hotel. There were individual cottages set up in the trees, barely visible from the beach. We saw the pool and dining room of the hotel, never did find the lobby. We heard it was $700/night to stay there. Pretty amazing, right there on the beach.

By the time we got back to where we'd left our gear, there must have been 100 people on the beach! What happened to our own private paradise! A German cruise ship was in the harbor also, so with 2 ships on this small island, it was a bit crowded. By then there were 20 or 30 people snorkeling out by the rock. We saw a lot of folks from our ship also. We headed back out, this time Mel had ham that he'd brought for his lunch. He had a big bag of bread to bring, but left it in the cabin. Turns out fish love ham! He had about 50 of the clearish fish swarming around him. My nails were painted pink, about the color of ham, so I got nipped at a couple of times. One fish put his entire mouth around the tip of my finger. Sure felt funny. Several people saw the commotion, so Mel had an audience. The fish were jumping out of the water and just swarming, it was very cool. He gave some ham to some others so they could feed them. Nice experience.

After that swimming episode, we walked thru the woods to the other beach. The trees in the woods were bent and turned so it looked like the scary woods in Snow White. Really beautiful and unique. At the other beach was another hotel. We never saw where the rooms were but there was a restaurant and a small shop. We headed back to our gear to go to the ship, but decided to go out snorkeling one more time. We went out 3 times in all and each time we saw different fish that we hadn't seen before. There were so many different kinds! They were anywhere from 1" in huge schools, up to about a foot long, a big guy lumbering around. There was a lot of sea anemone also, and with the bright clown fish hiding in it, looked just like Nemo.

On the way back to the ship there was a huge sign reading Boutique, with arrows pointed toward the path. Some folks who live on the island had set up shop selling hand painted clothing, shell jewelry and postcards. I bought a couple of postcards and we headed to the ship. It was sprinkling, then really raining by the time the tender arrived to take us home. The Captain came on the speakers to say he could go straight thru a channel and head out to sea, or go thru the reef for scenic cruising. He did the latter, so we saw a number of islands as we headed out toward Sydney. We have 2 sea days to recoup from our beach adventure. Good thing, I took a 2 hour nap today! Must have done myself in with all the swimming. It was worth it though, really unbelievable. We are both a bit sun burnt. I'll be using sun screen more often next time! Some folks onboard who have snorkeled all over the world told us that Ile Des Pins was the best they'd ever seen. I'm really glad we were able to experience it.

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