Noumea

So it all started off pretty standard in clinic for a port day. Usual few punters popping in, most of whom just seemed to want to chat. Then we had a sweet old lady who had taken a tumble and after discovering a broken bone we had to sedate her and play around with the plaster a bit to fix her up. 

However, what me and my collegue Craig were waiting for was the chance to nip out on our bikes. Both of which had flat tyres. So after leaving him in medical to finish off sorting out the lady I popped off the ship to find a pump. Found a chap over at a bike hire place and after promising to advertise his business to thousands of people he agreed to pump the tyres up for free! Perfect! He also told me about a few bike trails on the other side of the island so the destination was set.

Now to describe Noumea as hilly would be an understatement. Finding a flat piece of road was almost. We did though pass a runway… which I think was the only flat bit in the whole city.

I was kinda thankful for the 30 second break to do a bit of plane spotting. It wasn’t long after this that we found ourselves trying to break a few of our own bones nipping round a pretty cool trail on the east side of the island.

We can’t peddle forever so we eventually decided to try and find a beach. That didn’t really work though. Instead we found ourselves running straight into some cultural centre called Tjibaou.

After bumping into a security guard and realising we don’t speak any French he pointed us in the direction of the entrance and we found ourselves wandering around a neat little museum.

Leaving it until the last minute before we decided to head back to the ship we again navigated the hills and found ourselves back at our little home.

Turned out clinic wasn’t too busy… so what do you do with a roll of labels that don’t fit anything and no one wants? Well… just roll them out to count them, see how long the roll is, see if it’s as long as the ship, generally create a mess…