Wednesday

Easo

Lifou Island

New Caledonia

Lifou Island is part of New Caledonia and about 150km North East of Noumea. Easo is a very small village on the North West coast of Lifou.

The ship anchored at 7am about 1km offshore and the passengers went ashore in four of the life boats. This procedure had the added pleasure of allowing me to watch the boofheads who didn’t read the instructions distributed last night on going ashore or listen to the instructions given this morning being asked to go and get the identification required to go ashore and a boat ticket (the ticketing system lasted until lunchtime, after that it was just turn up on A deck, which is a crew deck below deck 1).

I decided to go ashore as soon as possible, which was about 8.15am, because it was very windy and I thought that it might get so windy that they would stop passengers from going ashore. We landed at a jetty on a beach that was about 500m long. It is the only beach on this side of the island as far as I can see; and that’s probably about 10km from the top deck of the ship.

I walked up to the church on the promontory that we could see clearly from the ship. The path wasn’t too steep but if it was pouring rain and just a bit windier than it was today then you’d be giving serious consideration to having a lie in on Sunday morning instead of going to this church. The statue on the roof of the church was blown into the sea during a cyclone some years ago and the locals thought it was lost forever. However, scuba divers visiting the island found the statue and using large air lift bags raised the statue to the surface and somehow got it ashore, up the hill and back on to the roof.

I then walked to a small bay across the promontory rom where I had come ashore (the promontory being only 500m wide at that point). This bay had only a tiny beach that was difficult to get down to but the whole bay was filled with coral sitting in water that was as clear as gin. Steps down on to the beach and into the water are being constructed but are currently roped off with a ‘do not enter’ sign; this was ignored by all visitors.

As I was one of the first people to see the sights and to be heading back to the beach while vast shoals of later arrivals were heading ashore meant that everyone who came toward me asked me how far it was to the church, was the climb difficult, was it open (no), what else there was to see (the bay with the coral) and so on. I felt like a one man Easo tourist office. Speaking of which there were locals fulfilling this function sitting at a table just near the beach that my interrogators would have walked past on leaving the boat. As today I was in a rare amiable mood I patiently gave the required details to all and sundry.

The locals were offering for sale much the same merchandise that I’d seen for sale at the last three ports, except this all had “greetings from Lifou” on it. There was also food for sale. Being part of New Caledonia and therefore part of France, the food included baguettes and quiche. I put some money into the local economy by buying a can of that famous French beverage Cola de Coca.

Back to the ship for lunch and a change of camera. I went back to the island on boat number 10, which is my assigned life boat. I was happy to see that it is sea-worthy. I wasn’t so happy to see that the rated capacity is 150 persons when used as a lifeboat. Today it was a squeeze to seat 60 people so I don’t see how 150 would fit unless their bodies are going to be stacked like firewood.

Once ashore I walked back to the coral bay and took some photos using a polarizing filter on the lens which cuts out reflections from the water and also darkens the sky.

On my first visit ashore I went for a swim and the water was surprisingly “refreshing”; other passengers said it was cold. The beach was sand but once in the water it was mostly broken coral underfoot.

At 5pm the ship lifted its anchor and we started towards Noumea.