Monday, September 29, 2014

L'ile Aux Canard

We've had a very full on day today, starting with a morning at the school.
Early start for everyone.
Andrea, Gaylene and I took the local bus from the hotel around to the school to meet up with the kids. We knew it was going to be a good day when the bus driver blared Celine Dion through the bus as we drove around the Bay.

Soon the bus filled up, mostly with school kids.

The teacher at the school gave us a tour in the beautiful morning sunshine.



We all had the experience on sitting in one of the French/English classes. The English class had a project for our kids which they listed on the white-board. We have to make a tourist video of New Caledonia, by getting special video footage and photographs of the places they listed. On Friday they will put it all together as a presentation at the school.


We ate a big school lunch with the rest of the school, running to get under cover while a quick shower fell. We were worried it might rain into the afternoon, as we were scheduled to catch the bus back to Anse Vata to get the water taxi across to Duck Island. But the shower soon passed and the sun came out again although it was very windy.





What a beautiful place Duck Island is! You could almost swim out to it from Anse Vata, it's that close. It was hot and sunny and calm over on the little island. Andrea advised us to put our reef shoes or wear sandals getting out of the boat, which was wise advice, because all around the shoreline was dried out coral - such pretty shapes and textures.



We found a shady spot under an umbrella for us all to sit and store our things. There is only one place to get changed here on this island, and it was a small toilet - long drop toilet, that is. So we held our noses and got into our bathing suits.

Everyone got a chance to go our snorkelling. We heard reports of a baby octopus, a sea snake, a fish with a very long nose - a little like a sword-fish, and lots of beautiful reef fish and coral. Everyone talked about getting stung by something out there that made loud popping sounds. One of the girls said it was like that popping candy. We wondered if it might have been a micro jellyfish of some sort.





After the snorkelling some of the girls sunned themselves, some of us walked around the island (which doesn't take very long at all). It was nice to be able to go for a little swim in the beautiful clear water and to cool off on a very hot afternoon.

This was our little spot for the afternoon. You can see my son, Hugh on one of the loungers and Ben on the other one. The girls chose a different part of the island to sun-tan.





At 4pm, our boat came to pick us up and we travelled back to the mainland.

I have lots more photos to upload, but will try earlier in the morning when the internet connection is better.....

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