Traveling with Ray Owens

Today we docked this massive ship at the port of the capital city of Noumea in the country of New Caledonia. New Caledonia is a territory of France. The official language is French. Many people also speak English partly because their neighbor with which they trade a great deal is Australia. Because they are an official territory of France, the country of New Caledonia are members of the European Union.

Our excursion today is to see via bus the city of Noumea. And to stop at the aquarium.

Our tour guide was Michael, he was very helpful in trying to teach the mostly Australian folks ( 2 Canadian and 2 USA)

He volunteered to us that he had 40 years of tour guiding and that he had just turned 60.

He told us that along with many Europeans in the middle of the 1800’s, the French government exported criminals from the prisons in France to the new facilities in New Caledonia. And like the prisoners transplanted into Australia, the French sent prisoners from France to New Caledonia. The prisoners built a great number of the buildings here.

We learned that the main religions here are Catholic, Protestant (mostly Anglican) and more recently the immigrants from the Middle East also brought the Muslim faith.

The majority of the people are part of the catholic faith. We were taken to the top of a hill overlooking the bay and city. Also on that hill were lots of religious icons based on an adoration of the Virgin Mary.

Michael inferred that this adoration of Mary was mostly restricted to New Caledonia. Having been to South America and the southern US, I can confirm that the adoration of Mary is alive and well there.

The sign above the entrance reads Notre Dame of the pacific, pray for us.

Michael took special efforts to warn all of us tourists that if we were to walk around in the afternoon to be very careful not to break any laws. Justice here is evidently swift and punishments are severe.

The aquarium was very good. They do not try to display the aquatic life from around the world. They concentrate on tropical sea creatures from the Great Barrier Reef that lies just a few miles from main island of New Caledonia. The coral and fish are magnificent in their colors.

They have a display of sea turtles. We were informed that they are caught in trolling nets and brought to the aquarium where they stay for a month and if they are well they are returned to the ocean. Then new specimen are brought in for their vacation in the aquarium.

They had all kinds of aquatic fish. One of the displays is in a pitch dark corridor. There they have on display the bioluminescent fish that live in the dark and attract prey fish by lighting up their nose or lower lip.

You will be happy to know our three hour tour did not end in the predicament the crew and passengers of the S. S. Minnow found themselves in.

We have been relaxing in our room and on our balcony.

Dinner this evening was a Taste of Great Britain. Guess what they served. You are correct fish and chips with mushy peas. The dessert was sticky pudding. The English and their empire all have an issue with the term pudding. It means dessert. So they had carved beef with Yorkshire pudding. In this case it is blob of some bread-like dough they deep fry until it is almost black. They forget to do what the English do who serve Yorkshire pudding with gravy.

At dinner we were sailing, no steaming, no dieseling, maybe just moving the ship south so that the strong sun was coming in the window we sit by. The hostess asked if we wanted the curtain down. Yes, please. The curtain went down and a bit more. Then part way up. Then down again. We then asked if it could be half way down. So they got that to happen just about as the sun was setting.

We are sitting in the theater to watch Duck Cameron. No, not a typo his name is Duck as in quack quack. He was very entertaining getting several people from the audience to participate.

Duck was a very good sleight of hand magician. He spent the first half of the show without speaking.

Good day

PS. McHale and his navy were no where to be found.