Cruising Since 2010: Dawn Princess - Sunday 24 January, Lifou

Beautiful Lifou

We booked a tour for Lifou but it wasn't an early one so no need to rush (like we ever rush on a cruise!). Our tour met on land unlike our one on Isle of Pines where we met in the Wheelhouse Bar. This just meant we needed to go and get our own tender tickets. The tender tickets were being handed out in the dining room on deck 5 (our dining room!) so once you were ready to head ashore you would go and get your tickets, wait in the dining room until a tender was ready and then head on down.

Waiting in the dining room for our tender numbers to be called

Of course we had breakfast first (as if we wouldn't!) and then put our swimmers on and grabbed our towels then headed for deck 5. The wait wasn't very long at all and the tender over was only about 5 minutes or so. We met Kathy & Trent on the tender, they had another tour booked which left before ours. We still had an hour or so before our tour left so we just checked out the markets, watched the dancers and went for a bit of a wander. It is HOT so we didn't do too much walking, ended up just finding somewhere in the shade and waited for our tour to be called. They were running a little late but nothing too major.

On the tender

The wharf at Lifou

It is HOT HOT HOT! Not too much has changed except they've tarred their roads and there are more cars, buses and vans. Hopefully having cruises ships visiting regularly is a good thing for the locals. (After our tour we learnt that it IS a good thing - it's giving the younger ones jobs where as before they would have to leave Lifou for work. Generally to Noumea)

Markets - facing towards to Dawn Princess

Calling our tour

Ready to go

We had four cars in our group with 4-5 people in each car and they were airconditioned, bonus! It was quite a speedy tour, we went flying passed the church you can see from the ship (not the one high up) and had thought about walking to it when we got back but changed our minds. We did stop to have a look at another church, quite a quick look, and then walked down to our next stop. We didn't realise we were at our final stop as our driver and car had left. The main lady told everyone to go to outside and to our cars and we said 'but ours is gone'. She finally realised our car had gone and then just told us to walk down the road and wait there. It wasn't very far but it had just started raining. When we got down there our car was there, we went to get in but was told 'no no, this is your next stop'. oh, ok.

We got to have a look at one of their parliament house huts and then to a demonstration of the locals cooking a bougna. Similar to hangi - cooking food wrapped in leaves in the ground.

Parliament House Hut

Preparing the Bougna

After we had eaten some of the Bougna (yum) and had a coconut we headed back to our cars and back to Lifou wharf. The tour was approx 1hr 30mins. The locals did a wonderful job and tried their very best to explain everything to us and answer our questions. They are still getting to grips with English but they try very hard and speak much better English than we do French!

The rain did get quite heavy while we were watching the locals prepare the bougna, we had a shelter and it eased off a bit by the time we walked back to the cars. One of the lady's complained about the walking and said she wouldn't have done the tour if she knew there was so much walking - there wasn't much walking at all. 100 metres all up, done slowly and all flat. There's always someone who has to complain.

Once back near the wharf we had a quick walk up the hill, well I did, so I could take a photo looking down and out towards the Dawn. We did this photo the last couple of times being at Lifou, it's nice to see the differences each time (and how old we're getting!).

New road since our last visit

We walked down towards the beach and it started raining. It was still quite warm but we decided not to go swimming. We just relaxed for a bit and enjoyed being here. Again, we are so very lucky!! Pinching myself!