We woke up to a view of land.

Today was our day in New Caledonia, an overseas French territory. So really it is Nouvelle Calédonie.

We all got up and had breakfast at Cabanas before mustering at our meeting point and leaving the ship. We had decided to do a tour of the city of Nouméa and a trip to the aquarium. We disembarked as “Flounder’s Group” at 8:45 and onto our waiting bus. First impressions – we could have been on a set from the BBC1 series – Death In Paradise. This is a French territory, and the largest speaking Francophone island in the Southern Hemisphere. We had commented that all the cars in Australia were Japanese as we had only seen a handful of European cars but in Nouméa, the cars had French origin with Renault, Citroën, Peugeot being in abundance. Street names looked French with the blue background, white writing and white border, we passed Auchan, Carrefore, Casino supermarkets and BNP PARIBAS, the bank. McDonald’s and Burger King have also made it here, Starbucks has not. The restaurants that we passed definitely had a seafood and French feel. We drove by colonial houses and were told about New Caledonia’s convict past and well as how the island came to be. New Caledonia is not volcanic in nature, but was formed from the continent Zealandia when that broke off from the supercontinent over 80 plus million years ago. (Info partly from the guide and from Wikipedia).

James Cook was the first one to explore and named it New Caledonia because the Northeast of the country reminded him of Scotland. Having not ventured to the North, I couldn’t possibly comment … but the parts we did see certainly didn’t remind me of Scotland.

This is what we saw when we arrived in the working port, just to show it wasn’t all glamour!

In 1853, under Napoleon III, New Caledonia became French and shortly thereafter the mining and exporting of nickel became a major industry since the soils contain about 25% of the world’s nickel resources.

Close the port was a market, clearly set up for the cruise industry. Apart from the big supermarket, all the other shops in the capital were shut. The currency is the CFP, the Central Pacific Franc but when we did our touristy shopping the market accepted all major cards (except union pay) and Australian Dollars.

Going past the beaches on the way to a view point and the aquarium saw many on or in the water, at Lemon Bay, which is a popular site we saw a shark barrier which had been installed after some deadly shark attacks.

Our view point was Ouen-Toro which had a view of a race course. Horse racing had been introduced by a former French governor as something to do! The park on top of the 132mish hill is home to two never used Australian cannons positioned there when New Caledonia was home to the Australians during WW2.

A 1600km long coral reef borders a 24,000 square kilometre lagoon about 25km in depth is home to many diverse sea creatures including 14 species of sea snakes. I was glad that I wouldn’t be up close and too personal with these creatures.

At the Aquarium of the Lagoons we saw all sorts of tropical fish and corals, a turtle of great size, a lobster that if on my plate, I would have struggled to eat on my own and finally a live nautilus.

After the aquarium we were taken back to the bus and back to the ship. Once there we hopped on a shuttle bus which took us back to the markets. Some jewellery, a magnet and two hand printed sarongs were bought. Our sarong material is from China, the dye from Marseille and the man that created it is from New Caledonia. Here I am sporting mine with a familiar face.

Back on the ship after contributing to the local economy we had lunch, I blogged and then we had a family dinner at Tritons. The New Year’s Eve dinner is not normal fare, and for our usual tablemates the meal was not to their liking, so they went elsewhere.

Eleanor and I had two outfits for NYE and on going to the the restaurant both Martin and Eleanor colour coordinated with each other and the restaurant!

After dinner, Eleanor and I changed and altogether we headed to the Walt Disney Theatre. Seating 977 people, you are told not to save seats. However on sitting down last night, the family beside us said that one of their party was at the toilet and therefore only two seats available, I therefore moved. But once I had settled, another man in the family then came over and told us that actually there were two more people in the toilet and they needed the entire row. Both Martin and I were frustrated by this and told the family so. We then moved again. It was annoying, but we had seats. Many were left sitting on the aisle stairs. The popularity for the show was down to the fact that it was Frozen. A 75 minute shortened down live version of the film. Anna and Elsa’s grown up characters used puppets for when they were children, Sven the reindeer was cleverly done and Olaf, the snowman who likes warm hugs also was a puppet, handled by a man’s hands and his feet.

It was spellbinding and had something for everyone. The cruise does shows twice a night during the two dinners. One show is usually at 6:15 during the first dinner and then the second show is at 8:30. Because our dinner is at 5:45 we go to the later showing. The first evening of being on board there is no live show.

After the show, we said goodbye to Eleanor who went to meet up with friends and finish getting ready. Martin and I went to three bars before ending up at an adult exclusive magic/mentalist show by Andrew Lee. Malaysian born he has been on Asia’s Got Talent and also Britain’s Got Talent (both shows have passed us by). However, his show was mind blowing as he guessed correctly who had a 50 cent piece and in what hand (he had to choose from 6 people /12 hands) and he made a page of a book, chosen seemingly at random, travel across the room to a sealed, previously empty envelope held by a random guest.

After this show, Martin then went to get ready and finally we made it to midship Deck 10 for the welcoming in of 2024.

When we arrived on board, we were told that we would be having two sets of fireworks at sea this cruise. One set for New Year’s and a set for Heroes night which is New Year’s Day. We were also told that Disney Cruises are the only cruise liners to be able to have fireworks at sea.

A quick google of this can’t really verify this nor can it tell me why. But I can say that a friend on another cruise elsewhere in the world, didn’t have fireworks on board – instead they watched from onboard the fireworks on shore.

Just before midnight, staff began handing out sparkling wine in one of “glasses”. It could have been handled better and Martin and I were fortunate to get one, sadly due to someone taking about 5 for her party, she knocked over one and Martin’s trouser leg got an impromptu glass of sparkling.

It didn’t dampen our spirits though. After midnight, we had just wondered out loud where Eleanor was and that we probably wouldn’t see her until the next morning. But magic does happen, and suddenly she appeared at our shoulder.