Are we nearly there yet?: Saturday 12 November Carenage, Prony Bay

Early morning tranquility

Moved deeper into the bay to have a look at a famous dive site, the Pinnacle. In glorious isolation from everything around it this is a skinny rock pinnacle rising 38m from the sea bed with nothing else around it. Being so deep into the bay visibility is affected by run off from the sienna coloured hills that surround it. Today the wind was blowing mid strength kicking up large wavelets. Together with the limited visibility and talk of calving bull sharks in the neighbourhood didn't make us feel comfortable about trying a dive today. Our alternative was to go 2 miles further in in to the best hurricane hole in the country.

The Carenage is a joy; the burnt orange soils appearing between scrub, emerald bushes and pines combined with the sense of tranquility and bird song make this feel a special place. Indeed the ethnic kanak people never lived here believing the land to have mystical powers unlike the government of France who developed this as a penal colony and used the prisoners to mine iron ore, nickel and cobalt in the late nineteenth century.
We went for a walk which began with a careful dinghy ride up a shallow river to a thermal pool and a path from here crossing a terraced waterfall and then meandering along the sore past ruins from the time of the penal colony. On our way we met two French couples who were spending the weekend camping shore side and spear fishing. A nice chat to find out if we had missed any of the specials points of the walk finishing with an exchange of contact details and an invitation to meet in Noumea and be shown the highlights of the town and to offer help if we were looking for boat parts.

Body temperature thermal pool

The sun was getting lower in the sky so we turned around and retraced the path back over the waterfall with the intention to stop and bathe in the thermal pool by the dinghy dock. As we were getting closer we heard cheerful voices of a group who were already enjoying their bath. Four happy French couple of forty something who'd chartered a catamaran for the weekend. We got talking as you do and they kindly invited us to join them for a drink on board this evening.
David and I went over and with their excellent English and my poor French we talked about life as an expat in New Cal, our life cruising and everything in between. Earlier we mentioned how we like French wine, et Champagne n'est pas? Oui. So they offered a glass of bubbles to go with foie gras on toast. They also offered us their extended hospitality of a lift to the big supermarket out of town, or help to find boat parts (David has a current project to mend the tuning function of the SSB radio) and an invitation to join them for a New Year party in the country.
We went home feeling very happy and remarking on the continued kindness of the people we meet on our travels. We can go from complete strangers one minute to swapping details within an hour.