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Ile de Mare, New Caledonia

November 16, 2012 – Friday – Ile de Mare, New Caledonia

2012 Total Solar Eclipse cruise

Children dressed for welcome ceremony at Wabao village, Ile de Mare, New Caledonia
Children dressed for welcome ceremony at Wabao village, Ile de Mare, New Caledonia

I don’t have anything planned for today’s port of call, however the daily program says there is a free activity where everyone will be driven by bus to Wabao village. The Captain of the Paul Gauguin and the village chief will exchange gifts at a welcome ceremony. So a hundred or so of my fellow passengers (and me) pile into buses and make the 20-minute journey down the road. We encounter cute children dressed for the occasion, who sing us a few songs. The captain and the chief make brief speeches, and then there is some food for those who decide to stay. The rest of us return to the ship, or are dropped off at a snorkel area called Yenjele Beach. The beach looked divine, but I stayed on the bus and returned to the ship for lunch, and have a snooze in a sofa in a shady spot on the pool deck.

I meet some interesting people at dinner in L’Etoile this evening. Two couples are dedicated eclipse chasers, and are from the same university town in New Hampshire. One elderly couple are SCUBA divers, with the wife having done over 1,000 dives, and her husband having done over 1,500 dives! She no longer dives, but her husband continues. The husband of the other couple was an engineer with AT&T before it was broken up, after which he retired and went into the telephone standards industry. I also meet a Brit living on the Isle of Man who arrives at the table a bit late. He is a live wire, and apparently spends his retirement kite surfing at various locales around the world. He really likes going to South America, where he asserts the best kite surfing in the world can be found.

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