New Caledonia

So it is almost a year since of cruise, I can't sleep due to dramas relating to the recent purchase of a new home. So here I am, I am going to conclude the tale of our most recent overseas trip, and promise myself that next time (December, when we head to Singapore and Hong Kong), I am going to blog as we go. Why do I lie to myself so often?

Hop on Hop off bus

 I highly recommend getting tickets for the hop on/hop off bus. It took us to all the places we wanted to see and I don't remember having to wait very long for a bus to arrive, each time we rocked up to a bus stop a bus was just around the corner.

Markets!

Second breakfast of champions

The first stop we made was to the markets for some after breakfast pastries, which were delicious. We look at the markets. Marvelled at the extremely expensive hats (I think there was a $60-$70 hat Imogen has her eye on.) I think we ended up distracted her with a slinky or bouncy ball. 

The entrance to the aquarium

The second stop was to the aquarium, which really impressed me, so such a small little place, they had a lovely selection of sea creatures including on of these:

The nautilus 

 I hadn't seen a nautilus before. Fossil records indicate that nautiloids have not evolved much during the last 500 million years. Nautiluses are much closer to the first cephalopods that appeared about 500 million years ago than the early modern cephalopods that appeared maybe 100 million years later (ammonoids and coleoids). They have a seemingly simple brain, not the large complex brains of octopus, cuttlefish and squid, and had long been assumed to lack intelligence. But the cephalopod nervous system is quite different from that of other animals, and recent experiments have shown not only memory, but a changing response to the same event over time.

In a study in 2008, a group of nautiluses (N. pompilius) were given food as a bright blue light flashed until they began to associate the light with food, extending their tentacles every time the blue light was flashed. The blue light was again flashed without the food 3 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours, 12 hours, and 24 hours later. The nautiluses continued to respond excitedly to the blue light for up to 30 minutes after the experiment. An hour later they showed no reaction to the blue light. However, between 6 and 12 hours after the training, they again responded to the blue light, but more tentatively. The researchers concluded that nautiluses had memory capabilities similar to the "short-term" and "long-term memories" of the more advanced cephalopods, despite having different brain structures.^[17][18][19] However the long-term memory capability of nautiluses was much shorter than that of other cephalopods. The nautiluses completely forgot the earlier training 24 hours later, in contrast to octopuses, for example, which can remember conditioning for weeks afterwards. However, this may be simply the result of the conditioning procedure being suboptimal for sustaining long-term memories in nautiluses. Nevertheless, the study showed that scientists had previously underestimated the memory capabilities of nautiluses. (Wikipedia). 

Glow in the dark

 I wasn't a big fan of the glow in the dark, dark room. We managed to enter at the same time as a group of school kids, and it was noisy. Our kids started to have a bit of a freak out. So we left and came back when it was quieter. It was quite pretty.

Don't eat here

 The worst part about cruising is that at each given destination you are under a time crunch and unfortunately in Noumea the place we went to for lunch LA BARCA decided that our time wasn't really that valuable. An hour after we'd ordered that hadn't even started to cook the kids meals (which were like hotdogs or chicken nuggets, they would have taken minutes to cook) the worst part was the waiter kept coming passed, at LA BARCA, and telling us that our food was "five minutes" away. So like chumps we waited. In the end we left, after paying for our drinks but refusing to pay for the food that was "on its way to the table" - yeah right.

AVOID

 So after the complete bust that was LA BARCA we had crepes at a place near the dock. They were devine, the salted caramel was so good. 10/10 would recommend.


So that's our adventure at sea. Our next holiday is going to be on land. But I'm glad our friends convinced us to go on this adventure, and I think I wouldn't mind going with them next year. If we can.

x T

Fiji

The waterfall

 I'm going to start by saying that the people that we met in Fiji were so lovely. One of my patients at work last year had been from Suva, and I was excited to see where they had come from. We disembarked at the port of Suva to an amazing band, that really created a party atmosphere. We decided to stick together (the eight of us) in Fiji. Stubbornly refusing to take a carnival cruise tour, we had a quick look to see what the locals were offering. It all seemed to focus around this waterfall. So after waiting for our bus in the blazing sun, we were on our way to the waterfall with a 'tour', which would include a lookout and a local village stop on the way.
Oh the tour was bad. We were in a minibus and we stopped three times, the first stop was at the top of the hill, looking back at our cruise ship. I think Chloe was the only one to get out of the bus to get a photo. The next stop was at a random house, our 'local village' stop. We were literally just sitting in a minibus outside of someones home, and we weren't really allowed out of the bus/there was no one there expecting us. So awkward.
Finally (after our guide pointed out the prison and Mormon church) we made it to the top of the waterfall. The guide thought I WAS GOING TO STAY IN THE BUS. While my family went down for a swim. Oh I am such a little hot head. While everyone around me were discussing the best way down I said *oh F*ck it* and picked the closest track and started my way down.

It was half way down the steps of slippery death, as I imagined how difficult it would to be removed from this scene in a stretcher that TLCs wise words finally made sense... don't go chasing waterfalls.

The waterfall

It wasn't the easiest thing, getting down all the "stairs" that were covered in wet leaves. But I am stubborn. To a fault. And just took it one step at a time. And hey, I didn't die.

Imogen and I at the waterfall :) I'm not waiting in the bus

 What blows my mind is that two older ladies from our cruise chose NOT to climb down to the waterfall, the highlight of our dodgie tour. Why not just stay in Suva?

ice cream

 After our "tour" we were dropped back into the middle of Suva, where we did some shopping. Arch bolted from me, when Ri went to put something away in a store. Arch ran in the opposite direction to Ri. Oh it was just about the scariest thing. I thought I was about to lose my boy in Fiji.

Shopping at the markets 

Immy got her hair braided by the locals

watching the band as we were leaving 

I am obsessed with collecting books while we travel

Would I go back to Fiji? Probably. I've seen photos from friends who have holidayed at the resort side of the island and those holidays look ah-mazing. 

Bora BORA

Bora Bora was our second and final destination that required a tender to get ashore.
To be honest after the beautiful day we had in Moorea, Bora Bora got off to a rocky start, it was raining. And windy. And cold.

tender

On this day, I had expressed to Ri that I needed to be near nice clean facilities. So we decided to get a day pass to the intercontinental, which had been so amazing in Moorea.

It wasn't as nice as the one in Moorea, the staff at the desk were unpleasant and it didn't have the same beautiful coral reef or dolphins or turtles. We did some snorkelling, but it was much colder than it was in Moorea (because of the wind).

The staff inside were lovely, our pass included access to the beach and lunch, but one member of staff brought us out some pastries from the breakfast buffet, for the kids. He also got us some extra towels for the kids when he noticed Arch was cold. Super nice.

We spent a bit of time on the beach, reading, building a sandcastle and running around the beach.
The lunch was nice, the best part was not having to hunt around for somewhere to eat, it didn't take a large chuck of our day from us. It was just relaxing and yummy.

Lunch with my little man

We checked out the beach across the road from the hotel and it was nice, but a lot busier. We didn't really have time to get into the water and have a good snorkel.

The other beach

My least favourite part of cruising was the short days that we had on shore, we had to be back at the boat by 3:30pm. And I think we tendered at 9am. We might go on other cruise, but if we don't, that would be the reason. Everything else about it was great. I'd recommend at least trying it once.

Before boarding the tender we found a shave ice place and had a sneaky shave ice while we waited to be herded onto the penultimate tender.

Shave ice on Bora Bora 

Papeete

Land! 

 Waking up to see land after five days at sea was a strange experience. We'd made it to our first destination. No vomiting, no fighting between friends, and no major damage done by our sea legs.
Izzy did run full pelt into a wall handle, but go up straight afterwards and kept running. They continued to call me dramatic for noticing that waves made the boat move :P.

The view from our room

black sand!

clear water :)

 I think Papeete and Moorea were my favourite stops. Papeete for the time that we had (it was like 9am-11pm), so we could take our time. Erin and Dave learned that Immy and I require constant feeding.
For our first stop we found a lovely little French place to have lunch, Chez Loula et Remy. ah it was so good. And we met a cat that eats pasta.
We stopped at two beaches, the first one was too shallow for me to snorkel at, but the kids loved it (the photo of the fish was from the first beach, a white sand beach). The black sand beach was just gorgeous to swim at, it was near Venus Point. Only thing - no fish! But Chlo and I did enjoy a swim out into the black looking (but clear) water.

white sand beach

For dinner we went to the food trucks that were at the harbour next to the cruise ship. We had crepes. Rhys and I were pretty pleased with about our French food reading abilities hahaha, speak it? no, Read it? no. Read menus, why yes. hahaha. Shows our travel priorities right there, 

Pacific Cruise Sea Days

When Erin and Dave first mentioned the idea of going on a cruise, I’m fairly sure I would have said no. Or maybe, which is pretty much me for no. But they worked away at me slowly. Their cruise photos always looked amazing and it did seem like a good way to go to a few countries with two young kids. So we skipped straight to a 18-day trans pacific cruise, because if you’re doing something you may as well go all in.

On the first day it was decided that feeling or mentioning that the ship was rocking with the waves was very quickly labelled as being ‘over dramatic.’ I tumbled into the breakfast booth and asked if this level of rocking was normal. Yes, yes it was.

Good news – the kids and I don’t get sea sick.

Bad news – we are unco.

Erin sat down across from me and breakfast with the ‘fun times’, orange highlighter out, things to do places to be. And then we ended up at the pool sipping cocktails (not highlighted) and Ri and I took our kids and Izzy to mini golf that afternoon (also not highlighted). I've never been very good with schedules, Ri and I were always late if Erin wasn't there to get us to events on time. 

An unexpected part of the cruise was how Immy and Archie took to kids club. We thought it would be a battle and even bribed them to go on the second day (and went to serenity – the 18+ pool- awesome). By day four or five they were begging to go during dinner. Awesome. I took a book (A Clash of Kings) and actually managed to get about half way through it.

Ah the serenity... oh so white

view from our balcony

Kids club, kids club, KIDS CLUB :)

Thanks Jamal

At the front of the boat, on level 9

Our room, a balcony on level 8, was amazing. The view was great, after leaving Hawaii we were taller than any surrounding building until we got to Sydney. I liked just chilling on my balcony and not highlighting anything.

Jen, Lewis and Clark, any of the musicals with music from the 70s or earlier (Triggered).

I think one of my favourite things to do was going to the comedy club. Good times.