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!

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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/