sayvan

A little closer.. she is a beauty..

landfall....

Tenders..

Mystery Island Point... The toe of the island

Its definitely a tight beach in some spots..

Not really sure where these folks are going..

just hanging out...

Always love the shot of the ship in the distance...

After some snorkelling we had a few drinks and headed toward another area of the island. By this time the water was really starting to get rough...

climbing some trees...

Some Angel fish decided to make an appearance...

The coral seemed a little trampled...

The snorkelling was not the greatest but I think that had something to do with the crowds on the island. There were lots of people in the water all day and I am sure that played a part in keeping the fish away. Towards the afternoon the weather was also starting to turn a bit and the waves were starting to roll a little more... there were still plenty of fish to see but had the water not been so rough, I think we would have seen more...

You can see a lot of fish in this shot but also how the ocean floor was starting to stir up a bit..

Tender boats coming and going...

The dock in the distance is where the tender boats were headed.

Vanda enjoying the warm waters of Mystery Island.

After the walk around the Island, I was pretty hot so I decided try some snorkelling myself so I headed out into the water...

Mystery Island was a beauty. It had all the elements you think of in a tropical island. It was definitely a tourist port but yet it seemed untouched in many ways.

another shot of Voyager...

The terminal at the airport...

A couple of local kids play on the airstrip...

Friends...

Great photos, thanks for taking us with you!

 

 

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Thank you.

My Mystery Island tour continues.....

Something about a Palm Tree...

Beach Shadows...

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We did love Voyager...

Beautiful blue waters...

On the other side of the Island from where I started, Voyager starts to come into view...

I will be back with more in a bit. I have to get on a conference call.

You could rent these cool looking kayaks if you didn't want to snorkel but still wanted to see some marine life..

This was the airstrip I mentioned earlier.

There were many pathways as well as you moved inland.

Continuing our time on Mystery Island. The one end of the island is very rocky and can be slippery if you are not careful. The tide was out when we were there but it was obvious this area is covered when the tide comes in.

some folks out snorkelling...

Despite being a tiny Island you could still find your private spots...except for the guy walking by with the camera...

I will continue the tour of Mystery Island tomorrow... Thanks for tuning in.

Lots of rental activities available as well.

Our next Port was a tiny little island in the South Pacific called Mystery Island. Mystery Island is one of the many Islands of Vanuatu. When I say tiny, I mean you can easily walk around the entire Island in about 40 minutes (taking your time) and you can cross the Island in about 10 minutes.

You can see here the Island is not really that big.

This is a tender port. I'm not a big fan of a tender, but I will say that Royal did a pretty good job getting people over to the Island and the wait to get off the ship was not that long. Getting back to the ship was a completely different story.

This stop is really just a beach day. There is an old airstrip on the island that was established during the Pacific War (WWII) as the American's used the island as a base and refuelling stop for their aircraft. There was lots of beach, the sand was soft and a pure white colour, the water was a perfect light blue. If you wanted food or drink. it was also readily available for a pretty reasonable price. The locals took Australian or American money. There was also a small shopping area with local crafts.

Once we settled into a spot, while Vanda did some snorkelling with our friends, I decided to take the walk amd explore the tiny island. This was one of my favourite stops. The weather was great for most of our day but started to turn towards the end of the day. The picture above of the Island I took from the ship at the end of the day.

Great review so far and your photos are beautiful! Thanks for posting :)

Thanks for following along.

Am really enjoying this review. We visited Noumea in January on our Fijian cruise on Diamond Princess. Brought back memories of our wonderful time. Your photos are fantastic!

 

 

*******How did you upload photos into your review please? *******

 

 

Any help would be most gratefully received.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks.

Thanks for the kind words. I used to use photobucket but they charge for anything decent. I now use Flickr. You can upload your files to Flickr and then you can click on the share tab and paste a code that comes up into the reply box on CC. Its more or less a link from your Flickr account to CC.

Our day in New Caledonia ended with this ... tomorrow we would visit Mystery Island.

Just a few more of the Snorkel.

Some more of our snorkel. Had the sun been shining I am sure these colours would have been even better.

We then decided we wanted to get some snorkelling in. Noumea is known for its excellent snorkelling and it did not disappoint. We headed down to Baie des Citrons beach. This place came highly recommended for snorkelling. The beach itself wasn't the nicest but then again that may have had something to do with the weather on this day. The sand was very soft and we could park right along the beach.

Noumea is also known for its sea snakes. In fact, one of the deadliest swims these waters. The good news is that their mouths are very tiny and they are unable to actually bite a person. Having said that, I still was not wishing to see any and I didn't.

After a visit to the battery we then headed over to another lookout spot where you could see more of the city of Noumea. We actually followed one of the tour ship buses to this location.

a long way down...

We continued along the coast as the rain continued down on us.

After completing the coastal drive we started to head up to the Pacific War Battery. The sun even started to pop out for us at this point.

The views where the Battery is are spectacular.