I appear to have spoken a little too soon about my progress battling my little fever.\u00c2\u00a0 It has hung on for four more days that we have spent mostly in Noumea, capital of New Caledonia, another French territory.\u00c2\u00a0 It is quite a bit further west than Tahiti (three time zones, and across the International Date Line), and it’s further south as well (making the winter just a bit more wintry, that is, having completely comfortable 70-ish days and 60-ish evenings instead of Tahiti’s 80-degree temps around the clock).\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, it’s pretty close to Australia — we saw it from the plane when we flew home from there in Jan 2003.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s surrounded by a reef and its lagoon is recognized as a World Heritage site.<\/p>\n
I was thrilled to be able to connect with my doctor via e-mail (I’m here, he’s in Vienna right now) who assured me that it was nothing to worry about.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s your basic minor viral infection, but it’s hit me in the form of headache, aching jaw, and mild fever; I noticed that it actually came with an incredibly slight scratchy throat; a runny nose I had to blow twice total in the past few days; and about three coughs worth of phlegm.\u00c2\u00a0 All the normal stuff in vastly different proportions.<\/p>\n
So we haven’t been doing as much.\u00c2\u00a0 The day we arrived (leaving Tahiti on Friday, getting here on Saturday three hours later) I just rested, after a six-hour flight, an hour-long bus ride into town, and another twenty-minute bus ride to our hotel.\u00c2\u00a0 Sunday and Monday were spent going to one museum each day, and this wore me out to an extent.\u00c2\u00a0 Today we rented a car and toured the south end of the island, including an hourlong walk, and I’ve felt reasonably good all day.\u00c2\u00a0 So now perhaps it’s finally fading.<\/p>\n
The museum we went to on Sunday, the Tjibaou Cultural Center, was stunning.\u00c2\u00a0 It was designed by Renzo Piano, the architect who designed the Pompidou Center in Paris.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a long building, and along the length of it are a dozen or so tall structures which echo the way a Kanak (Native New Caledonian) chief’s house is put together.\u00c2\u00a0 The first room we went into had totem poles carved by sculptors from all of the island groups in the area.\u00c2\u00a0 The pole from Papua New Guinea was carved by two of the same sculptors who came to Stanford fourteen years ago to carve a sculpture garden.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a great display of contemporary art by Kanak artists.\u00c2\u00a0 The center was dedicated to Jean-Marie Tjibaou, who fought for and won more rights and recognition for Kanak people in New Caledonia, and who pressed for New Caledonian independence from France, but who was ultimately assassinated by natives who thought he was selling out.<\/p>\n
Our hotel is a block from the beach, in a section of town which looks like Fort Lauderdale.\u00c2\u00a0 We spent Monday downtown, which is a much more modest neighborhood.\u00c2\u00a0 Noumea might have Parisian restaurants, but the feel of the city is quite a bit more island-nation.\u00c2\u00a0 The Museum of New Caledonia provided a great education on traditional Kanak artifacts both from New Caledonia and other nearby Kanak island groups (Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Irian Jaya).\u00c2\u00a0 There was a small exhibit on the remarkable hats woven by a Polynesian woman, with diagrams showing each of the 60 folds that are necessary to create a particular pattern.\u00c2\u00a0 Another temporary exhibit displayed engraved bamboo poles with analyses of the engravings.<\/p>\n
Today we rented a car.\u00c2\u00a0 Our efforts to shop around for better deals resulted in the cars that were available getting rented by others, and we ended up with a worse deal.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh well.\u00c2\u00a0 Gotta be more decisive.\u00c2\u00a0 Since I haven’t felt up to snorkeling, we stopped at the Aquarium of the Lagoon for an hour or so.\u00c2\u00a0 There were asymmetrical fiddler crabs, “rhinoceros” starfish which are whitish with red and black “horns”, hundreds of species of tropical lagoon fish, and lots of coral.\u00c2\u00a0 Some strange orange-spiked fingered creature which Ray had seen snorkeling turned out to be a starfish called Crown of Thorns, and it is especially reviled for its ravenous fondness for coral.<\/p>\n
We drove out of Noumea and towards the south end of the island.\u00c2\u00a0 It was actually pretty bleak-looking — the forests were clearcut, there was an enormous nickel mine.\u00c2\u00a0 Vast areas without many trees.\u00c2\u00a0 We turned into the Blue River Provincial Park just after 2 PM, which is too bad because that’s when they stop letting people in for the day.\u00c2\u00a0 They let us look at the exhibits in the visitor center, but we couldn’t go further into the park.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re proud of their population of cagou, a threatened native white bird.\u00c2\u00a0 We listened to their calls on a little DVD exhibit, and after stopping the DVD I noticed that I heard exactly the same calls coming from outside.\u00c2\u00a0 Afterwards we went and saw a tiny waterfall, and walked through a tiny forest where we were taller than most of the trees.<\/p>\n
We haven’t really made any pretense of eating native food here — there will be plenty of chances for that in Vanuatu and Solomon.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve pretty much concentrated on French food, and have had three wonderful meals.\u00c2\u00a0 One night we tried a Vietnamese place, and it really made me miss San Jose.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow we head to Vanuatu, and getting to the airport will be much easier with a car.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not so sure we’ll have quite as good an Internet connection as we’ve had here in France, I mean New Caledonia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I appear to have spoken a little too soon about my progress battling my little fever.\u00c2\u00a0 It has hung on for four more days that we have spent mostly in Noumea, capital of New Caledonia, another French territory.\u00c2\u00a0 It is quite a bit further west than Tahiti (three time zones, and across the International Date […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/sp2010\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}