TheRamblingWombat Ile des Pins

Climb It Or Admire It From Kuto Bay

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Having completed a wonderful island tour, walked the length of Kanumera Bay and relaxed a bit with friends on the gorgeous Kuto Beach there were still a couple of hours left before our cruise ship was scheduled to leave the Ile des Pins.

I had planned on hiking up Pic N’ga, the highest point on the island and easily accessible from Kuto Beach. While I felt I could have fitted the walk in (advertised as 1.5 – 2 hrs max duration) I had read that the track was not wonderfully well marked so there was a risk that I would arrive back too late. Continue reading “Climb It Or Admire It From Kuto Bay” →

TheRamblingWombat Ile des Pins

Pirogues And Pancakes At The Bay

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Pirogue at St Joseph’s Bay

During his second voyage in 1774, Captain Cook visited New Caledonia. Jacques Brosse, in his book, Great Voyages of Exploration, 1983, wrote:

“To the south of New Caledonia, he discovered a small island remarkable for its high conifers, which were so crowded together that from a distance they looked like basalt columns. The species belonged to the genus Araucaria, then unknown. These Auracaria columnaris, which measured as high as 70 meters, looked like giant pines, and Cook therefore called the place the Isle of Pines.” Continue reading “Pirogues And Pancakes At The Bay” →

TheRamblingWombat Ile des Pins

No Hurries, No Worries

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Paraphrasing Henry Neville’s 1668 book, ‘The Isle of Pines’, swinging sex, free love and unadulterated naughtiness was rife on an island in the South Pacific around 400 hundred years before the first two of these terms were coined by Californian hippies in the 1960s. And, perhaps even more amazingly, it was the famously inhibited and prudish English that brought these things to the Isle of Pines. I invented the third term. Continue reading “No Hurries, No Worries” →