last weekend in NC!!

Well, you would have thought I would know by now about the benefits of SPF… My back is a perfect example of sun burn, you can see exactly where I missed when I applied the cream. I’m thinking of taking a photo and sending it to Garnier as proof that their miracle cream is in fact miraculous!

So another awesome weekend, just got back a couple of hours ago with a burned back, an empty food sack and covered in sand. Got the ferry super early on Friday morning, nice smooth journey, had a wee coffee and pain au chocolat and watched the sun come up. When we got to the Ile des Pins we were picked up by our campsite owners and driven, literally round the corner, to paradise. I’ve taken hundreds of photos but it is all more or less the same. Beautiful white sandy beach, blue!green water like you can’t believe, palm trees and dogs.

Elodie and I pitched the tent, got into beach mode straight away and installed ourselves on one of these beautiful locations. We pretty much just lay on the beach til about 2pm when it started to get a bit cloudy, and so we went exploring. I must have got burned when I was in the water because I had been quite sensible, staying in the shade most of the time and still using factor 30 (had to sell my soul to afford a second bottle and they don’t yet have that handy spray stuff here.)

We walked back round to the wharf and had a coffee in a restaurant round there, saw a dog fight, found the military base (what a life!) and headed back to get ready for dinner. We were dining in the Gite of the campsite we were staying, which was called Nataiwatch. We had escargots, which are Ile des Pins escargots, and so much larger than usual, but cooked and served exactly the same way, and equally delicious! We also had some kind of seafood curry and a coconut tart... so tasty! Pretty exhausted and full by this point, so we headed back chez nous, to our luxurious tent for a pretty satisfactory night’s sleep (ie warm and dry.)

The next day we got a lift from the camp owners to a beach on the north coast of the island, where there is a piscine naturalle. This was amazing, it was a pity we didn(t have any snorkelling stuff because we didn’t get to see as much as we might have, but the whole place was like something in a film! Unfortunately, it rained a bit, and while I didn’t really understand why that mattered when you were swimming, we packed up and walked round the island a little, and lunch and then thought that since we were so close to the Meridan, well, it would be rude not to, so we stopped by for a coffee and to abuse their beach. I was desperate for shade by this point so I was walking around with my classy Nouvelle Calédonie beach towel over my head.

One overpriced coffee later, it was time for our lift back to the camp. We had dinner in the Gite, then I headed over to the hotel beside the campsite where a couple of girls we knew were staying in super delux bungalows. I joined them for a glass of wine and dessert, for dinner I’d had venison stew, not exactly what you might have picked on a tropical isalnd so I was quite keen for a wee glass of red, which for some reason was served ice cold. We’ll never know. Walking back was particularly cool as I was the only person on the beach, almost afull moon and hunderds and hundreds of stars (don’t worry mum it was like 50m.)

Today we got up early as we were going to mass at 9am in the main town, about 7km from where were we camping (oh, during the night it rained, it was so cool to by safe and dry but kind of outside as well). In order to get there we just stuck out our thumb. Some guys picked us up in a crazy van. I tried not to think about the drink driving rates here. Mass was really nice, a mixture of french and local dialect, and lovely singing. And the kids are unbelievely cute. Then we went on a huge hunt for a baguette (no more?? In the whole town??) which involved climbing into the back of some dude’s pick up truck and hoping that we did not meet the gendarmes. He was going to visit his mum, but if we wanted to wait about 90 mins he would take us home. We ended up cadging a lift with a woman and her two daughters and three of the hugest pots I have ever seen.

After another stressful afternoon on the beach (the surf was so strong, it knocked you right off your feet) it was time to disassemble the tent, pack up and go home. The ferry was pretty rocky as it was quite windy, and there was a huge group of steaming Kanaks who were returning to the grande terre after a wedding. Still we did get to see more whales (that’s 9000F I could have saved).

And now I’m back in the hostel, just about to go to bed before my last week of ‘work’!!

xxx