DAY FIVE - AT SEA

Saturday October 25th and we are at sea today and tomorrow on the way to Nukualofa. Yesterday we spent the day at Noumea but before I report on that I need to revisit the first couple of days.
You will recall that Evon had arranged a Meet and Greet onboard on the first morning at sea. for all those from our roll call. Princess announced the time and place for this in their first edition of the Princess Platter. We had read that many of these meet and greet events had been poorly attended with peoples intentions changing once onboard so we were all very pleased to see 30 of our possible 32 members show up. It was good to finally put faces to the names and we spent over an hour together planning shore excursions, forming teams for onboard trivia and organizing dinner companions.
Friday 8am and as promised the Captain has us alongside at 8am. The day was a little overcast and the weather report threatened showers. These never eventuated and the day turned out ideal for touring around.
Because of the size of the SP we were not able to tie up to the Passenger Terminal but were instead docked in the Commercial part of the port. Princess provided free shuttle buses for the 20 minute drive to the passenger terminal. Mary and I had nothing really planned for the day other that the hop on hop off bus. Unfortunately no-one at the terminal knew where to catch the bus. Fortunately for us Peter and Evon arrived on the next shuttle so we tagged along with them, walked to the market and then through the city to the museum bus stop. . We had just missed one bus and looked like waiting an hour for the next when we were approached by another passenger from the ship who had managed to make contact with a local lady who had a 10 seater and was willing to take us on the same tour that we had just missed out on for the same price, 1000xpf each. We were joined by Deb and Vern who had been visiting the museum.
The lady who arranged all this was spoke French which was just as well because our very friendly driver, Kathy, spoke no English. This was not a problem until about half way through our tour our French speaking fellow passenger left us to visit the Zoo. Things got a little confusing after that and our one hour tour soon blew out to over two hours before she dropped us back at the cruise terminal. We visited beaches, resorts, lookouts, cultural centers, more lookouts, and all in all had a fantastic tour of Noumea.
Noumea had never been on my list of places I just had to see and after yesterday that hasn’t changed. It is just another city, not unlike a lot of Asian cities. A lot of commerce/industry, some very nice beaches, a few reasonable looking resorts, some lovely old colonial home and some very poor areas as well.
All onboard and we cast off on time at 5pm heading for Nukualofa..