Pacific Sun Cruise to New Caledonia.... My gorgeous hubby and I went on a cruise with friends to visit Noumea, Ouvea and Isle of Pines Sept/Oct this year. We tempted fate sharing a four berth cabin. Rather interesting when 3 of us ended up with sea sickness and i had to amuse myself in the Casino - but thats another story.

Now this was my first trip overseas and my workmates can recount my 7 week battle to obtain the correct copy of Marriage Certificates, Divorce Certificates, Medical Certificates and finally the Passport interview!!! I was the first one out of the four to start the process and was the last one to receive the passport.

Now P & O have had a bad trot of late with nightmare incidents onboard and we had already gone thru the trouble of selling another ship after we paid the deposit and were due to sail thru Thailand etc....but thats another story.

Leaving Sydney Heads the first thing P & O do is put on a big 'Sail Away' Party...yes your's truly made the most of the Cocktail within the first hour of being on board. After many pics & little videos taken on our digital camera we looked forward to enjoying fun activities and great food, silver service dining, plus the boys had a pact to drink as many cocktails & rack up an unbelievable drinks bill before arrivng back. We had Three days of cruising just to get to New Caledonia, a day of shore tours, then overnight sail to Ouvea and one more night till Isle of Pines, followed by 3 days cruising back to Sydney.

We were greated by Noumean dancers at the Market place - the shipping terminal. They danced as all 1900 passengers disembarked. The Noumeans are quiet pleasant people as long as you can speak some French and are prepared to spend money... The city is virtually a 3rd world city, the number homeless is quite disturbing though (maybe we just miss a lot of homeless in our own cities). The beaches and tourist part is picture postcard - what you see is exactly what it looks like.