Miners Exodus

The beach looked beautiful this morning with the water like glass.  I went for a walk around the bays and met up with Bill having an early morning swim at Baie des Citrons.  There were dozens of locals out walking, jogging and running so the pathway was like a highway!  It's a bit like the Lion's walk in Taupo really, and of course the view just as stunning as ours on a cracker day. Cycling is a major sport in France and is very popular here as well. At the weekends there are always a number of single cyclists but many packs of riders are on the road as well.

It was a quiet day for us with Bill and Baz having a paddleboard later in the morning and then in the afternoon we went around to Port Moselle and looked at all the boats in the marina.

       Bill surveying his foreshore and seabed - he said he didn't realise his rights extended to Noumea!

                                                                          Port Moselle

Apparently about 80% of the population here in Noumea own a boat and there was a huge range of them berthed there. Many are ocean-going vessels and some are obviously visiting with registrations from many other places, particularly Australia.

The marina is next to a large parking area which is used for the markets and for the commercial area not far away. As I said earlier in the blog, there has been a massive strike on by nickel miners. They had moved their trucks off the road they were blocking the day before we arrived, but had parked dozens of them in this car park, using up a large percentage of it.  We heard another version of why they were striking last night. It's all very political and even the locals say no-one truly knows what's going on, but they thought that the government here was stopping smaller Australian mining companies from selling second-grade nickel to Korea and China saying that it should be kept and used in New Caledonia. The govt obviously doesn't like the fact that they are getting a higher price off shore than they can get here. There was an absolute cacophony of sounds as the procession of trucks all slowly pulled out of the carpark with their horns blasting on their way out of town.

I hear the weather wasn't too flash in Taupo today - hope tomorrow is better.

Au revoir from the Tropics!