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It was yet another early start as we weighed anchor at daybreak in order to make our way to Noumea. Our first sighting of the New Caledonian capital revealed high rise apartment complexes as well as modern homes and arriving in the Port Moselle anchorage area reminded us of Le Marin in Martinique - yachts everywhere. The marina is a modern facility with very helpful staff who pointed us in the right direction to clear immigration, customs and biosecurity.

After a lovely long walk along the waterfront to stretch our legs, we found the immigration offices just before they closed for the day. A brisk walk to customs in the hope of catching them before their lunch break didn't payoff. Unfortunately we were too late so, instead, we enjoyed a delicious lunch at Restaurant Captain Cook, where Elaine had a steak accompanied by a roquefort cheese sauce and Roy had octopus in a creamy tomato based sauce - Unbeatable French cuisine!

En route back to the marina to meet the biosecurity official, we stopped in at "Les Petits Choux" patisserie to enjoy a grande cafe au lait and some French pastries.

What never ceased to amaze us about any of the French islands we visited in the Caribbean is that there was never any fuss during the clearing in / out process and the most it ever cost us was a small donation to cover the cost of the ink and paper for the printed clearance form or, in most instances, it cost us nothing. New Caledonia was exactly the same - It didn't cost us a single Franc, not even the cost to have our leftover organic produce incinerated by biosecurity.

New Caledonia is a French overseas territory consisting of the main island, known as Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands of Ouvea, Lifou and Mare to the east, Isle de Pins and Ouen to the south and the Belep Islands to the north. It is the fourth largest islan d in the South Pacific, exceeded in size only by Papua New Guinea and the north and south islands of New Zealand. New Caledonia is located at the southerly portion of Melanesia and, although tropical, is neither too hot or damp. It definitely seems to get a lot cooler overnight though. Captain Cook was the first westerner to find the islands in 1774 and named it New Caledonia because, to him, the pine-clad ridges bore a resemblance to Scotland. It became a French colony in 1853 and was essentially used as their penal colony, in a similar way to how the British colonised New Zealand and Australia.

While the sights and, particularly, the smells of Vanuatu made us feel like we could have been anywhere in Africa and, therefore, not really a new experience for us, we are definitely looking forward to a different experience here in New Caledonia, especially the French culture we both love. This evening we bumped into Discover II (Gillian and Dirk), whom Elaine first met in Fiji and enjoyed a rather extended happy hour with them. It seems we've started off on the right foot!

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