Cruise to Vanuatu and New Caledonia

So I recently went on a Cruise to Vanuatu and New Caledonia. Life had been pretty full on for a while for both my Wife and I and we decided we just needed a quick, easy and cheap getaway and a good deal came up to go with P&O for 10 nights and 5 stops: Nouméa, Lifou, Vanuatu, Mystery Island and Isle of Pines aboard the Pacific Explorer (because apparently I can only cruise on ships with Explorer in their name).
While actually booking the cruise the lady at Cruiseabout (now Flight Centre Cruise) asked if we had previously been on a Cruise, we said we had an that we had previously cruised with Royal Caribbean. She pulled a face, before trying to reassure us that we would still have a good time. We had heard from people that P&O was the... least fancy of the cruise ships, but we really were going for the stops more than the ship and were content with it not being a fancy or nice, just in need of a holiday which actually ended up coinciding with our 6 month wedding anniversary.

So the date came around we were packed and traveled up to Sydney to board the cruise ship. The ship was definitely smaller, but we still enjoyed the decor and I said I was excited to just relax, have a break from work, eat a bunch of food and do some trivia while at sea. So we found our way through to our room, which we noticed was much smaller than our Royal Caribbean room, but again we didn't mind. Now, before we came on my Wife had done some research into the ship and was very excited to eat at the 'Dragon Lady Restaurant' so we went to book for dinner there as well as at the other two restaurants, Angelo's and the Waterfront.
After that I suggested we buy our duty free, my Wife wanted to wait until we had been at sea, but as we were walking past and looking at the prices we decided to just get it then and there. I ended up getting 2 1L bottles of Captain Morgan Black Rum (my favourite spirit) for $15 each, and my Wife got a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold tequila and a bottle of Gordon's gin. We then headed to our first trivia, making jokes about our memories of previous cruise trivia host favourite 'Paul Poppe'.

After finding a seat at the Explorer Hotel, out came our host a short Irish girl who introduced herself as Dora. Dora the Explorer, on-board the Pacific Explorer. "That has to be a fake name." I told my Wife who said it was probably just short for something.
It was soon into the trivia we realised what would be the worst part of our cruise. The bogans. Our cruise this time happened to be filled with many loud, obnoxious bogans. As soon as Dora read out three as 'tree' the loud mouth, obnoxious accent jokes and just loudly repeating the way she said it began, but it never stopped. It was every trivia she did for the entire cruise that these same people did it, not realising they weren't funny but loud and stupid, like big ugly children.
Anyway, not to dwell on that because I can carry on with a very long diatribe about those people, we ended up tying in first place on our very first trivia and won ourselves a P&O magnetic picture frame, which we gave to my Wife's Nan.

The Ocean at Night

 We had morning trivia the next day which was held in a bigger area and was like a game show with the cruise director Joanna, her director assistant Rory (who was hilarious and one of the best parts of the ship entertainment) which also featured the rest of the cruise director staff. Around lunchtime the next day called 'Coffee and Cake trivia' which was hosted by a guy called 'Danny' who had previously been introduced to us by Rory as 'Swanish' because he was Swedish and Spanish. The trivia by Danny featured a lot of 'tick questions' such as: How many seconds are there in a year? The answer? Well after we all sat trying to do the math, it was 12. The second of January, February...etc. Everyone groaned and my Wife lent and whispered 'what about the 22nd?' Needless to say we did not win the free coffee and cake (which was from a proper cafe where you had to pay).

Honestly even though we've only been back for 2 weeks (I went back to work the very next day) my memory of all the chronology of the events aboard the ship has already faded. So I will rattle of a few things about the ship before going through the best part of our trip: the stops.
So we ate at the Dragon Lady restaurant, which was absolutely beautiful, the food was very nice, we liked the food at the the other two as well, however the food at 'The Pantry' we found declined in quality quickly to the point were I could only really it fries from there without feeling sick.

Dragon Lady Restaurant

We also noticed the cleaning practices weren't as good, often filling our cup up with water to have soup float to the top. By the end we didn't even want to eat there. We also found that there was no 24/hour food option like the Explorer of the Sea had had, which upset my Wife cause she had looked into it online and at the time there was a place where you could get little snacks any time of the day. The shows we also found severely lacking. It was the same crew putting on performances of often dancing and singing, and to put it bluntly they were fucking horrendous. The magician was enjoyable however.

Anyway by the time we reached Nouméa we were keen to be off the ship. We had already purchased tickets for the 'hop-on hop-off' bus with intentions to head to Lemon Bay again for some snorkeling. However after getting of and catching the cruise bus in to the town centre were told we had to catch that bus from the ship, so we hopped back on and went back and got on that bus, and it stopped at the town centre anyway, so we got annoyed by all the running around and lack of information in comparison to Royal Caribbean. So we arrived in Lemon Bay, it was still very early in the morning and the water was quite cold but we still went in and I had to slowly build my confidence up again (because of my fear of Sharks). Eventually it warmed up, and so did I and began feeling less stressed and anxious about Sharks and swam out to where the coral was last time we came (we didn't bring a camera with us, figuring we'd seen it all last time we came). However it was a bit different this time as there were sea snakes, that swam angrily up at me. With my face still beneath the water I screamed through my snorkel "SNAAAAKES!' and we began splashing our way to shore too terrified to go back over to the coral. Not knowing what to do for the rest of the day we swam in the water a little before deciding to go have some lunch at the place we got a delicious milkshake from last time. Which I didn't mention in my blog post, but it was a Hard Rock cafe I believe and I had a choc-coconut milkshake that was fantastic. However it was no longer there so we got a pizza from another shop instead and decided to just enjoy the day swimming at Lemon Bay. Swimming out to a floating wood platform to jump off. We eventually headed back in the afternoon hoping that we would do some good snorkeling at Lifou as we had payed to be able to enter the Marine Reserve 'Jinek Bay'.

The next morning bright and early we went and made our way to the island looking up and admiring at the church on top of a cliff. As soon as we arrived we began heading to Jinek Bay followed by a friend I dubbed 'Dustin' who followed us all the way there.

Dustin

We soon got to the bay and handed our form to show we had paid, and again I had to build some confidence up, this time fearful of Sea Snakes instead of Sharks. I soon relaxed and enjoyed the amazing beauty of the coral and marine life.

When it reached about 12:30 we hoped out for a coconut that they were selling right by us and decided we would head up to explore 'the cave' and along the way made friends with another random dog, this time and adorable Puppy.

Along our way to the caves many people walking back disappointed, informed us that you had to pay to be able to go to the cave, looking at how much money we had brought to the island, and we would have had enough if we hadn't of gotten the coconuts.

I decided I wanted to walk up anyway and found another dog sleeping outside the local church. I then wandered of the road out to a lookout with a cross overlooking our cruise ship.

As we were heading back to the road a guy came up through a bush track, asking where it went he said it took you down to the beach and you could follow it a long to where the dock was, as we were wanting to grab some lunch. On our way along I spotted a Turtle swimming in the water but it dove down. We rushed on our gear and ran in to find it but the wind was picking up and the surf began to get rocky. Upset my Wife thought I might not have seen one and we went back in, while talking I saw it again so we went back out and this time were able to see them and swim with them.

Feeling satisfied we went and got some food before swimming at the beach a little bit more and heading back to the ship.

The next morning we work up in Port Villa where we had a tour booked for the Cascade Waterfalls. We took in the sights and scenery on our bus trip there while the driver explained some of Vanuatu's history. We soon arrived at the area for Cascade Waterfall which we were told would be a short walk.

Along the way our guide kept stopping and talking about weird things like how we are all very special. It was like, every few seconds. Eventually we got to the falls and were able to go for a swim.

We weren't in there for too long, maybe 10 minutes when our guide told us all we''d go to the one you could jump off, we all moved and many people didn't jump, like my wife.

We were only here maybe 3 minutes before being moved on to one you could slide down. Again, not many people had a go.

We were here for maybe another 10 minutes before we began heading back. My Wife was actually quite upset at it cost $70 and she barely got to spend any time in, saying if she knew it was just that stuff she would have rather had stayed at the top swimming. While it was a great experience, it was really not enough time, and rather upsetting actually. But I guess we wouldn't have ever got to go otherwise.

When we got back down we got fresh fruit served which was really delicious, but we had to try and hide our annoyance behind polite smiles.

The next day we arrived at Mystery Island or Inyeug. We began by doing a walk around the entire island checking out the scenery and deciding where to dive.

We tried a few spots before finding a really good spot right off the beach.

While doing a walk around to find some lunch later in the day we found a guy who would let you get photos with his Iguanas for $5. Which as we both absolutely love lizards we instantly did.

The next day was our 5th and final stop. Isle of Pines. Once again we didn't bring any cameras as we thought we would be doing the same thing. However the weather was a bit dreary as it was lightly raining to we ended up paying and going on a tour around the island that ended up being really good as it was something we hadn't done before. We go to go around up high and look out of to and island we were told was Brush Island because it looked like a hair brush. We went to Maurice Bay to the War Memorial, a local church, the ruins of a penal colony in Ouro which were fun to explore the overgrown ruins, it was just a shame about all the graffiti. And we went to Oumagne Grotto or Cave of Queen Hortense, which was spectacular (you have to pay to enter) but it was great to explore and if I ever go back to Isle of Pines I'll do this again and take a torch as it was much too dark to walk to far into the cave, but it was a beautiful view that made me regret not bringing a camera, but I'm sure you can look it up on google. The whole tour took a little over 2 hours and by the time we were back at the main beach the weather was sunny and warm and so we spent the rest of the day swimming. Toward 2pm it began to rain and everyone was lining up waiting to get back on the ship, me and my Wife relaxed in the water while the rain poured around us.

We spent the rest of the time on the cruise ship attending trivia, going to coffee and cake trivia by Danny he reused half of the same questions, and although most the same people where there we won by getting more of the new questions right earning coffee and cake, telling Danny he reused the same questions he was shocked "Not on this cruise!" he said. "On others, but not this one!"
"Nah man," I said "You did like half of those on day 2."
He was shocked and couldn't believe it, saying they all just blend together now

I could talk about the rest of our days at sea, but it would honestly be a little negative and mostly me complaining. While I appreciate the staff and everyone efforts my Wife and I agreed that had it been our first cruise we would have never went of a cruise again. We also heard a lot of other people talking with similar complaints and almost daily heard the occurrence 'but a cruise is what you make of it'. So I guess everyone else tried to be positive too. Even our duty free wasn't delivered to our room and we had to be up at 6am to collect it the day of our departure.

All and all, we still had a great time, we really did it for the stops, having been disappointed by our stops (mainly Suva) last time. While this time we loved all 5 of them. We both agreed it'll be many years before we ever go on a cruise again and we'd both rather save and organise another overseas trip ourselves.

But now that I'm back home and back into the swing of things and it's winter, so I'm looking forward to doing some hiking and having some more local adventures!

If you have enjoyed this post, or my blog in general, please follow it, or like my page on facebook or follow me on Instagram.

Thanks for reading! - Steven




Extra tidbits! - So my Wife and I are taking part in 'The Ration Challenge' from the 17th of June until the 24th of June, in which we eat the same foods as a refugee for a week to raise funds and awareness. If you enjoyed my blog, are empathetic or charitable please donate to either my: https://my.rationchallenge.org.au/steven-hudson or my wife's https://my.rationchallenge.org.au/jennai-hudson sponsor pages. I will be filming some videos of us as well, and showing how we handle it so if you'd like to see those follow this page and I will post a detailed blog about how we found it when we complete the challenge. If you don't wish to donate you can also participate yourself: https://actforpeace.rationchallenge.org.au/

Carrington Falls - Missingham Steps to Kangaroo River

So it's been a while since my last post, which if you read, you'd know I hurt my ankle. That injury ended up with me taking a week off work (unpaid, as I'm full-time casual) and it honestly didn't heal in that week either, just well enough to walk on, but I haven't been able to hike or do any exercise like jogging or even doing laps of the pool as kicking my left foot hurt too much. It's the first time in my life I haven't just bounced back from an injury. Showing my age I guess. So while I haven't been able to do all that I've been having a transition period of moving homes, really close to the beach so that's what I've been doing in my spare time, recently trying to learn to surf. However this last week my ankle had finally started feeling a bit better, and I decided to test it out on a hike on Good Friday during the Easter Long Weekend.

So I took my Dad up to Carrington Falls, just up the top of Macqaurie Pass. As you drive in you pull in to the camp site to begin the walk.

You can continue driving if you wish to drive to the actual waterfall

Inside the camp ground there is an area just for parking, for day visitors (the camp ground is now paid, due to people misusing the area, and setting the toilet block on fire). Directly across from here is a sign letting you know the different walks around.

Now Carrington Falls is a bit sentimental to me. Whilst the first time I ever came here was with some friends camping, although we didn't back a tent and instead just a pole and a tarp to cover us attempting to sleep that way, a bunch of the guys complained the whole time and we ended up driving off to a party later that night and never stayed. However the next time I came to Carrington Falls, was a camping trip with the girl who is now my Wife. It was our first time really spending time alone together and we made some great memories. We would later come back a few times and I actually proposed to her right there at the Blue Pool (she said yes, you know, seeing as she's my Wife and I posted about our Honeymoon).

Enjoying a Swim in the Blue Pool

Showing off the Engagement Ring

 But I did this Good Friday Walk with my Dad, and we decided to do each and every one of the walks listed. So we began heading down the path walking past the Blue Pool, which one Good Friday was absolutely packed with people.

Continue down the left path as the right leads to nowhere

Down the right path? Beautiful scenery

Dad crossing the stream

Cross the little stream, although this may dry up at certain times of year, and follow the path along.

Continue up the path until it opens up

You'll soon come to a divide, with clear signage telling you to take a left turn down the path.

When you follow this for a short while you'll see the turn for the Missingham Lookouts and the way to the Missingham Steps walk.

We instead continued past this, to go to the Warris Chair Lookout, and to Nellies Glen, another famous local swimming hole.

You will come to an intersection, turning left we headed to Nellies Glen coming out into a carpark we continued left past a bunch of signs informing you of the area, it's history including the big feature of this post, the Missingham Steps.

Soon we arrived into the packed swimming hole. A beautiful spot, and I'm lucky enough to have actually been here swimming while no one else was around (along with a few other places on my blog) which is a rarity these days. I tried my best to take a picture of the waterfall without getting all the happy swimmers in the shot.

We then headed back, but I could here the sound of water flowing, and just off the path we came down there was a sort of other path behind wooden bollards which I suggested to Dad might take you straight to the actual Carrington Falls.

I was right and after a short walk, we were over looking the top of the falls, there was a few girls sunbathing up here and I took off my shoes to head over for a look over the Falls,

There's a bit of a story behind the Akubra hat I'm wearing too. My Dad actually found it on a walk one day, deciding to gift it to me as it was in good condition, my Wife instantly hated it, calling it 'an old man hat'. While I disagreed saying it was an adventure hat. However, it was a fight not to be won, and the hat was banned from the house having to stay at my Dads, so this was actually my first time getting to wear it out. I almost did the second time we climbed The Castle, but I knew how windy it got up there and decided against it.

Snapping a photo with Dad in the background

Photo of Carrington Falls taken from the other side by my Wife when we camped there years ago.

We then headed back up to the car park, back up the track and took the opposite route to go towards Warris Chair.

Again the walk it rather short along a pretty well maintained track (besides maybe a branch or two), so we arrived at Warris Chair, a big rock sitting atop a lookout. Packed with groups of people trying to take photos of themselves. While I waited for them to finish so I could get a shot of the chair I enjoyed the beautiful view offered here.

However the groups just keep taking photos, so we went and stood at the stairs waiting for them, my Dad even offering to take a photo for one group.

Lizard of Warris Chair, taking in the sun

While waiting we both began to feel bites on our legs and noticed a massive swarm of ants crawling up our legs.
As soon as this group began stepping down another group arrived, and even seeing as waiting there,quickly climbed up the rock and began taking photos of themselves.
"The Rock of a million Instagram selfies" I said to Dad. Frustrated as I just wanted a picture of the rock. Now, I'm not against taking a good instragram selfie, especially if you've come to a cool location or even completed a great walk, but think about it I couldn't help that think that there was no sense of achievement in being here. These people had literally pulled into the car park, walked 600m, bam you're there. It's a further walk to hatch an egg in Pokemon Go. When they climbed in front of it I snapped a photo and off we went towards the Missingham Steps.

Instagram selfie here? Link to it in the comments!

The path opens up and you follow it along side a farm paddock, which I can't express why, but I found serenely beautiful.

This path dips down and up again, bending around, you simply follow the farm fence.

Finally you'll see a sign pointing left back into the bush. Just as we turned in here there was a family walking out. To which my Dad asked if they had walked to the steps. "Oh no," said the guy "there's all signs there telling you not to. But you're welcome to."
"Yeah, we'll do it" I told him.
So we reached the sign directing to both the East Lookout, West Lookout and to the Steps.
We went to check out both lookouts and admire the view.

View from East Lookout

A nice looking Fungi

Someone made their own chair at the West Lookout

View from West Lookout

One of the 'warning signs'

So we began out decent down into the gully. The initial path down is pretty steep and you really need good footing and some climbing ability to get down, though it isn't a long descent.
Once down the temperature drops and you're completely in shade. You can tell it's an area not many people come down into and the view was beautiful.

Surrounded by the cliff behind you, a cliff in front of you and a cliff to your right with a small stream of flowing water down it it was clear you followed the gully left to head to Kangaroo River. There is no clear path, and the walk involved some rock scrambling almost the entire way. If you're not level footed and decently fit I'd give this one a miss. We continued onwards, unsure of where the Missingham Steps were until the Gully started to dip downwards and we began to spot them more and more often.

Don't expect to be able to just walk down the steps, these were made around 100 years ago and since there have obviously been rock falls, erosion, and general weathering. At many places you'll need to find ways to climb and jump down to lower areas. It was cool to walk through a place that has such distinctive untouched local history.
When you reach the bottom of the steps there is meant to be no clear sign-age however someone has went through ticking can lids to trees, spray painting, and tying pink bands to, I assume help guide people in the right direction. Even with this however it can be easy to get lost, a simple way to head the right way is to just follow the path made by water during the rain.

Panorama of the forest

Around this point the ground levels out and there's no clear indicator of which direction to take, we sat and had some food and scouted around a little before deciding to continue downward in the direction we were already heading in, the top soil here was very loose, so I slipped and fell landing flat on my ass before bouncing back up.
You can easily lose your direction because after this bit the spray paint, ties and can lids nailed to trees disappeared as we took a few different routes trying to find a path downwards.

There's a couple of places where we tried to use logs as footing and I don't recommend this at it was so soft we found a feet falling straight through as I managed to catch happening to Dad.

On a path we took (one that we decided was wrong) we noticed a bunch of blueberries. Assuming someone walking ahead of us had spilled some. As we kept walking we found more and more. Too many in fact that we began to question how there could be so many blueberries scattered all over the ground.

Elaeocarpus reticulatus

We also began to question how they could look so fresh. I began to question that they were blueberries, opening one up to see small little seeds inside. "They must just be a native fruit that looks like a blueberry." I said to Dad laughing. I believe it is the fruit of The Blueberry Ash, and native Australian tree.

We soon could hear the sound of running water and after climbing up a ledge we made or way over to Kangaroo River.

The view was amazing, and really reminded me of the sere beauty of Jump Rock, but more untouched. More wild.

While I was sitting by the edge of the water, Dad decided to continue upstream for a bit of exploration. Looking at the cool clear water I was desperate to go for a swim, but didn't want to walk back soaking wet. However figuring as I had the place completely to myself I quickly stripped down into my undies and ploughed into the icy water. It was freezing but super refreshing as well. Being a very self concious person I never usually get the opportunity to relax and just be alone and in nature and not have to be in my head worrying. The experience was fantastic and I left me feeling mentally as well as physically refreshed.

After a while I figured I had better go find Dad, so I hoped out, bathing shirtless under the warm sun to dry myself a little before I too, headed upstream.

Having stayed and explored around we headed back downstream to head home feeling good having accomplished another great adventure. Both agreeing we would like to come back and follow the stream all the way up to Carrington Falls and explore downstream a bit more.

And still noticing and admiring Fungi in the undergrowth on our way back

The walk back up was a bit harder, just both being out of shape compared to 2017, however breathing heavily and dripping with sweat we walked and climbed our way back up to where we had first descended into the gully and climbed our way out.

Overall is was a great walk, especially as a lover of both nature and history. Hopefully as my ankle gets better and better I can begin to fill 2018 with many more adventures. However they may have to wait as my upcoming month is pretty full on and at the end of it my Wife and I are going on a cruise to Vanuatu and New Caledonia so I'll definitely be back to write about that.

If you have enjoyed this post, or my blog in general, please follow it, or like my page on facebook or follow me on Instagram.

Thanks for reading! - Steven




Extra tidbits! - So I mentioned in my last post that my wife had bought me a ticket to go Hang-gliding. So I thought I'd share a video and pictures of my time doing that, which was excellent by the way!