Day 154, Year 2: Checking-in, Quarantine, and Touring Around
Date: Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Weather: Another Picture Perfect Day
Location: Baie de Hienghene, Grande Terre, New Caledonia
The three-day holiday weekend ended, so our first task today was to go to Heinghene early and see what we could do about officially checking into New Caledonia. We thought there was a port captain or someone in charge of the port here, but actually at young woman at the tourism office was our contact. All she could do was copy our boat papers and passports and send them Customs in Noumea. Our hopes for not having to travel there to be officially checked-in were dashed. We could either sail straight
to Noumea, arriving there in three days, or we could choose to send the boat captains there by land to visit both the Customs and the Immigration Offices. We opted for the latter and the young woman called the closest car rental to see if there was a car available–an hour away with no way to get there. She also called Quarantine in the town of Kone on the west coast of this island to have them make the two-hour trip here to do the Quarantine check. You can have passports stamped by Immigration
and fill our Customs paperwork without being on the boat, but Quarantine has to visit the boat. Poor Gerry on Scot Free II. He is the only one of us who really speaks enough French to carry on business, so he had to listen to us, listen to the young woman from the Tourism Office, talk on the phone to the car rental place, and try to make us all understand what was being said. No easy job. But successfully managed to arrange for a local to drive he and Bruce of Incognita an hour south to Poindemie
to rent a car and to have Quarantine arrive at 11:30 AM to check the boats. It sounds easier than it was. Having ten people with ten different ideas of how to do things is hard to manage. But with a little give and take, all were happy.
Gerry and Bruce waited at the Tourism Office for their ride to get the rental car while the rest of us walked to the open-air market to check out the fresh fruits and vegetables. The choices here are limited, but there was lettuce, tomatoes, a few carrots, some local vegetables, and bananas. We didn’t buy anything since we hadn’t been visited by Quarantine as yet. We kept walking and went across the bridge spanning the river and to the cultural center on the opposite side of the river. We didn’t
have much time since Quarantine would be visited at 11:30, but we toured the grounds and got to see the examples of cases or traditional Kanak homes. There is more to explore there and maybe the admirals will go back there tomorrow while the captains are in Noumea. We stopped at the only grocery store in this area on the way back to town. It is small and doesn’t have much, so reprovisioning here is going to be a bit of a challenge. It was at this point that I learned that the open-air fresh produce
market would be closing at noon today and not be open again until Friday. We will be gone by then, so knowing that was our only shot at fresh produce, we decided to go back and buy things and ask the young woman at the Tourism Office to keep it until after we had cleared Quarantine. By the time we walked back, not much was left to buy. I was able to get a little lettuce and a local squash that we like. There is another tiny store on the waterfront and I knew from yesterday’s visit that they had
potatoes and onions. So I stopped there and got onions and some nice tomatoes. We all left our bags at the Tourism Office and headed back to the boats. But there was a problem. On our way in, the fear that we had damaged our dinghy prop when we hit a rock yesterday became reality. We had to motor in at a very low speed, and going home was even slower. We did make it, though, and Mark did a temporary fix. He hopes to be able to find a prop in Noumea tomorrow.
Jean-Claude was our Quarantine officer and he was very friendly and the whole process was so much easier than we had been led to believe. He did take all fresh fruits and vegetables as well as honey, but he didn’t take dairy products and dried fruit as we had read. He also would not have taken meat, but all of us had eaten that so it wasn’t an issue. The issue is that we are out of meat and there is no meat here to buy. But I’m sure we’ll find a way to make do. Before we started cruising full-time,
we ate very little meat, so we will just go back to our old, healthier ways. I thought for sure I he was going to take my live plants, but he just check to see if they were bug-free and left them aboard. I don’t think I’ll be as lucky in Australia, but at least the plants (an ivy and a mint) have made it this far.
Paul and Marie on Ranger had all of us over for dinner tonight for Wahoo tacos. Marie made the taco shells and the Wahoo tasted as good as it did when it was first caught in Ambrym. We had a segregated evening–men in the cockpit and women in the main saloon. It wasn’t planned that way, but the guys had lots of planning to do concerning their trip to Noumea tomorrow and it gave the females a chance to get to know one another a little better. Marie, Donna, and I know one another, but Maree of
Galaxie and Janine of Incognita are new to the mix. We had a great evening topped off by one of Donna’s fabulous desserts. Tonight it was apple crisp. Delicious.
In order to make it to Noumea and back in one day, the guys leave at 4 AM. If they make it back by tomorrow night, it means that we might be able to leave here on Thursday, Friday at the latest. We will go south a few miles and then head back northeast to the Loyalty Islands. By going south we will prevent ourselves from having to bash directly into the trade winds when going due east. Hopefully by the weekend we will be in beautiful Ouvea.
 |
| 070925 Day 154 Grande Terre, New Cal–Centr |
