I have recently been extremely fortunate and lucky to have gone on holiday to Noumea. It was just for a week but that is still heaven to me.
The trip was supposed to be from Adelaide to Melbourne to Sydney, finally connecting to a flight to Noumea, New Caledonia. So I used a travel agent to take all the unnecessary stress and hassle.
Now, note that I say “connecting”. Very important, these connections. According to Webster’s Concise English Dictionary, the noun “connection” means “a thing that connects; a train, bus etc timed to connect with another…”
Simple enough for a professional. Not so, because my trusted travel rep, instead of making flight connections, had opted for the less effective and far less popular flight overlaps. Put simply, by the time our flight from Adelaide landed (albeit late) in Tullamarine airport at 1:30pm, boarding for the connecting; no, sorry; overlapped flight to Sydney had already closed and the plane itself was already gone.
Those of you still reading may well scoff and say that I should have noticed this issue on the booking papers. Indeed, I did. And even queried said travel agent, but was categorically reassured that all was well in connection town.
Luckily, after several hours in Melbourne Airport and a number of phone calls later, our travel agent made good on their error and found us another way to get to Noumea the next day, but by going via Auckland, NZ, not Sydney, as all the other flights were full.
We arrived in Auckland at around 2 am and were transferred by bus to an Airport Motel to wait out the few hours before our 8:30am flight out to Noumea. Initially I cringed at the thought of staying in one of those yellow brick boxes with the tiny brown bathroom tiles that have the blackened grout from years of tinea ridden feet walking over them since 1972.
But I was wrong. The Jet Park Motel in Auckland was clean, modern and tasteful, with enough glass bricks and palm trees to make Don Johnson smile with approval. A couple of hours sleep and we were back on board an Air New Zealand flight to Noumea. And they have even devised an original and clever way to make that dreary and boring but ultimately necessary safety film interesting. All the crew in it are actually only wearing body paint…
New Caledonia, in the south west Pacific, is truly beautiful country. Named for the Latin word for Scotland by James Cook in 1774, it was annexed by France in 1853 and was set up as a French territory in 1946. The landscape and scenery is exquisite; so lush, thick and green with countless plants, trees and bushes all competing for their piece of the fertile land. From the airport we travelled up jungle covered mountains, and even though it was raining when we arrived it was still pleasantly warm; a contrast to the wet and chilly Adelaide we had left behind. We saw no flies, no bugs. It wasn’t humid, just perfect, like the first day of spring.
It was easy to relax to the sound of palm trees rustling in the breeze, the chirps of contented birds and the occasional squeal of a happy child at play in the park. Even the low hum of traffic along the Rue De Promenade couldn’t invade the tranquility. The City centre had an almost Cuban flavour to it, but with modern cars on every street. The people, both French and Kanak were helpful and friendly when we asked anything in our halting and limited French.
Catching a public bus there gave us insight into what it must be like to be a minority. Around 43 percent of the population is Melanesians (Kanaks) and 37 percent being European. There are also Vietnamese, Polynesians and Japanese. This woke us up to what it would feel like to people of different races or colour when they come to Australia. It’s not a feeling everyone is comfortable with and we should all be aware of this and maybe empathize more. Even a majority is a minority somewhere.
Observing the locals driving was intense. Everyone appears to be racing around erratically, seeming to change directions every time they blinked. Strangely to us outsiders though, all the other motorists appear to be blinking in sequence so no one actually drives into one another and they all get to where they are going. As for parking; any where is fine. Wherever it lands.
All too soon, the week came to an end and it was time to return home. We were on an older plane this time, perhaps one of the Qantas’ first. No individual entertainment screens on this three and a half hour trip. However, we did get to enjoy the regular screaming of a child in the next aisle; the whining of the spoilt brat a few rows ahead because the duty free watch his father had just bought him was the wrong shade of gold. And then for a second, I thought I had some kind of special massaging seat, but I quickly discovered it was actually the incessant kicking of the delightful little girl in the row behind me.
My wife’s gluten free meal was actually a taste free meal and filled with wheat products thus defeating the purpose of a gluten free option, and the overall atmosphere of the flight was such that the obligatory crates of clucking chickens wouldn’t have been out of place nor would a goat roaming the aisles have surprised us either.
Eventually we arrived safely in Sydney, with a comfortable break between connecting flights. No more overlaps. Lovely. Except that the plane we were supposed to be travelling on to Adelaide turned out to be broken. So we had to wait in the airport a while longer. This was fine, hey, what’s five hours, better to be safe than sorry and the airline bought every one of us dinner while we waited.
Eventually we got on a new plane. And that one was broken, too. But they fixed it. After about 40mins.
By now it was after 7pm, and we were slightly delirious. We were laughing at everything. Particularly the steward, whom as he scanned our boarding passes was unable to tell us if we were even on the right plane. This same fellow later seemed to take umbrage at having to remove my takeaway meal boxes, which the airline had provided, and then took to only serving my wife drinks, as I had become invisible.
So 1 limo, 5 flights, 6 buses, and 1 taxi later we find our self home, sweet home. And I can say that if you’re looking for a break on a small budget, want to get lost in palm trees, want to experience a different culture but still be in European comfort, and your favourite food is fromage and baguettes; then Noumea is for you.
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