Nouméa IV

It is the weekend again already, it is already time to put something down on paper before I forget it again. A few more days have passed, and what am I still doing in this city? Well, mostly something involving looking out at the sea. Either I hike up a hill and look out at the sea, or I sit on the beach and look out at the sea, or I sail by catamaran to an island and do what? Exactly, look out at the sea. Or under the sea, while swimming, snorkeling, or visiting the aquarium. I think that sums it up pretty well. And when I am not doing something with the sea, then I sit in the atrium and enjoy the cool breeze, it is as simple as that. So this is how switching off works. You can do it well here. Incredibly beautiful scenery, incredibly beautiful sunsets, incredible, everything is great here. I already mentioned that something like love has grown inside me here, did I not? It certainly has not become any smaller.

Truth be told, without a car you cannot actually do all that much. My circles around the hotel kept getting wider, and I think by now I have pretty much combed through the whole city. That is why every now and then I get myself a driver, and what can I say, sometimes it is the same ones again and again. And there he was again, the bird from yesterday. The one who thinks I ought to go pick flowers. This time he took me to the Lagoon Aquarium. Including a little city tour. Here you can go out to eat, here you cannot. Oh look, my colleague. And here you can shop well. And that casino there will rip you off. And why are you even staying in a hotel, just lie down on the beach, it is cheaper. All insider tips.

By now I also know where to find the prettiest flowers, but I wanted to go to the Lagoon Aquarium, and that really was superb, a beautifully designed aquarium. Truly remarkably beautiful, but then again, they have the fish and corals right around the corner here, the distances are short. The Aquarium des Lagons was founded in 1956 by Dr. René Catala and his wife Ida and today offers an astonishingly dense insight into New Caledonia’s underwater world. It leads you through the island’s different ecosystems, from mangroves, freshwater zones, and coastal reefs all the way out to the barrier reef and the deep sea, showing animals you often hardly get to see out there, such as nautiluses, turtles, or fluorescent corals. You see sharks more often, and rays too. That is precisely why it does not feel like an ordinary aquarium, but rather like a concentrated entry point into the entire lagoon world.

And what I did not know and got to learn: corals are classified as animals. More precisely, the individual coral polyps are small cnidarians, relatives of jellyfish and sea anemones. What often looks like stone or plant is, in the case of stony corals, the calcium skeleton they build, in or on which the animals sit. What makes it confusing is that corals often also live in symbiosis with tiny algae. That is why they seem half animal, half plant, but biologically they are clearly animals. I think I sat for two hours in front of one of the tanks and simply could not stop marveling.

After that it was on again, coffee here and there, in one of those wooden buildings standing on stilts in the sea, then up to the city’s own hill, Ouen Toro, twice in fact, because it is so beautiful and the view is so phenomenal, and in the evening the sunset at Plage de la Baie des Citrons, a huge swimming beach with water so clear and calm. Incredible.

At the neighbor’s, whose name shall not be spoken, the swimming areas are usually maybe ten meters wide and have to be flagged off and watched by lifeguards, otherwise you are not allowed into the water. Here it is more like, go ahead, it will probably be fine. And by the way, the neighbors are not exactly loved here either. The New Zealanders yes, but the others rather less so. You can make instant friends if you say, yes I live over there, but actually, actually I do not really like them either, and suddenly you are a good friend. I wonder why that is. I think I have an idea.

Anyway, the sunset at Plage de la Baie des Citrons was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen in my life, and still fascinated by it I wandered through the neighborhood after sunset, and somehow the Côte d’Azur came to mind. Except that the people here are just a little bit more, well, what, happier, in better spirits? I cannot quite pin it down. I mean yes, they are French, but somehow they are not either. Not quite typical. They speak French, of course, but for example they do not have any problem at all if you do not speak it or do not speak it well. If they can, they switch immediately to another language, no problem at all. I will think about it a bit more, maybe it will come to me.

The next day I really did not do much, except go for another little hike to the Parc Zoologique, this time open, and only 600 XFP for admission, and once again a truly beautiful place. Nicely done, well laid out, also with the local botany and the emblematic animal, more precisely the emblem bird of New Caledonia, the kagu. For New Caledonia, it is perhaps what the kiwi is for New Zealand: a strange, lovable, almost unreal island bird. To me, though, the kagu seems more elegant and dramatic than the kiwi, with its crest, its red eyes, and that quiet dignity. The kagu is not a bird of great flocks, but one of stillness, guarding its territory as a pair and yet leaving room for closeness when the young remain with the parents for a while longer.

There are also other endemic species to admire in the zoo, for example the roussette rousse, a striking flying fox species, the New Caledonian crow, famous for its tool use, and the giant geckos. But my thoughts were already drifting toward next week. I am still not entirely decided on what I will do. Planning remains a little uncertain sometimes, also when it comes to travel times and booking times. There are websites where everything looks easy, but reality can turn out rather differently.

A small example? I wanted to take a boat out to the Amédée lighthouse, one of the landmarks, ideally by catamaran. Easy to book on the website. Half an hour later you get a WhatsApp: Ah, tomorrow probably not after all. The lighthouse is closed anyway because of renovations and also not enough people have booked, but Saturday, Saturday for sure. Okay then, Saturday. Friday evening a message comes in: So, um, how shall I put this, the catamaran is not going to the lighthouse tomorrow after all, but to a completely different island, it is an insider thing, do you want to come along? Okay, I will go along then.

Boat leaves at 7:30 am, please be at the harbor by 7:10 am. At 7:10 am I was the only one at the harbor. The boat left at 7:45 am for Île Ange. Two hours on a catamaran net, so I could not catch up on my morning sleep, with about twenty other young people, or let us say roughly between twenty and twenty five years old. Loud group of boys and rather reserved girls. By the time the skipper took me to the beach by motorboat so I could snorkel, they were already all holding their first beer. The boys loud, the girls rather quiet.

Because of my experiences with a borrowed mask and the huge amounts of seawater I swallowed, I bought my own goggles. What can I say, the money was worth it, the fins too, and my old GoPro actually still works underwater. Unfortunately the wildlife or reef life around the island was not quite as great as the last time. Never mind, still good enough for testing. Another round around the island and then the motorboat was already there again.

The captain dropped the girls off on the island, and I helped the ladies get out. Suddenly they were not all that quiet anymore. I got back onto the boat and into my favorite net and, listening to music, I did not even notice for quite a while that they had all come back again. Now the picture had changed. The boys were hanging quietly in the ropes and sleeping, and the girls were the ones who livened up. Whooo girls and French hip hop. What can I say, it was utterly pleasant. They were celebrating a birthday on the boat and fed me cake. I passed on the drinks, otherwise it was a great afternoon in the net of a catamaran. The people here are really relaxed and not at all dismissive toward strangers, though to be fair I am easy enough to deal with in my shyness. Really, really nice.

Two hours of sailing back along New Caledonia’s wild coastline, with evergreen mountains and clouds and beautiful bays, arriving at the harbor exactly at sunset, and what can I say, once again one of the most breathtaking ones one could possibly imagine. And once again I am sitting in the atrium and still do not know what I am going to do from Monday onward. In that spirit.