Enjoy New Caledonia's magnificent white sand beaches. Photo / Supplied
Enjoy New Caledonia's magnificent white sand beaches. Photo / Supplied
The Jurassic-like landscape and quirky flora and fauna of the island of New Caledonia captivates Liz Light.
Grande Terre, New Caledonia's mainland, is a big dragon-spine mountain range 450km long, and from Noumea these purple mountains beckon. Sam, my partner, sorts out car hire, and we drive towards them.
Navigating is easy, Sam remembers to drive on the correct side of the road and soon we have left the Noumea peninsula and are driving south between the mountains and the sea. The road turns inland, the houses disappear, the hills lose their tropical lushness and become steep, bare and eroded red. There is hardy vegetation in valleys and streams wind their way around red rocks. It's a sudden, solitary change of scene after the busy city and its suburbs.
There is fun to be had as many of these red-edged streams are crossed by concrete fords, and although we drive over them cautiously oncoming locals zoom through, washing their chassis and making waves.
A bare orange and ochre ridge is trimmed with whirling winged pylons. The Plum wind farm has 30 turbines, the road passes through the middle of them and, visually, it's like a weirdly beautiful, stark, lonely, industrial moonscape.
This land is so mineral-filled that the scant vegetation has uniquely adapted to survive on a diet of iron ore, nickel and copper. Though challenging for plants, the mineral-rich earth is the economic salvation for some and from the Plum ridge, where wind turbines whirr, we look across the Bay of Prony to a massive opencast nickel mine, slowly devouring a distant mountain.
In the Bay of Prony the raw red hills play with colour. Sky and sea seem surreally blue. Prony, a quiet fishing village with a stream running through the middle, is built around the crumbling stone remains of an ancient penal colony.
Creepers squeeze roots and tendrils between old rock walls and are slowly pushing them apart; in what was the lock-up a wall with barred windows is all that remains.
The corrugated iron fishermen's cottages are dwarfed by palms, ferns and banyan tress and all is lushly Eden-like, a strange contrast to the stark red hills behind.
Inland again we stop at Madeleine Falls, hardly Niagara but pretty enough. Madeleine lures us to the true attraction, the nature walk through the Jurassic-like landscape that surrounds it where, on this mineral-laden land, trees that are tall and luxurious in other places, such as kauri and pole pine, are hardy bonsais with gnarly trunks and convoluted roots.
Seven species of a primitive conifer edge the river - vestiges of another era - and a species of red and blue fish, which should, in theory, be a Gondwana fossil, is alive and well in the clear reddish water. Strange trees do weird things like sprouting bright spiky flowers directly from their trunks and mosses look like dried white corals that have been left behind when sea receded.
Rocky cliffs are a spectacular feature of the New Caledonia landscape. Photo / Supplied
Island-studded Lake Yate spreads through a wide valley in the middle of the mountains. A few trout fishermen flick their lines but, otherwise, this vast, beautiful lake is left to itself. It's only an hour or so from Noumea, on the main road, so I'm guessing the perfect beaches, warmer sea, tropical fish and beach toys provide enough fun to keep people on the coast. As the road climbs Grande Terre's spine, the vegetation changes radically; the east side receives lots of rain and dense rainforest is tangled with creepers and ferns with the occasional kauri crown bursting through the canopy.
On the east side, south along the coast, Kanak tribal villages tuck into flat areas between river, sea and mountain. The houses are small and insignificant in comparison to the splendid gardens around them and I feel that if the villager's stopped slashing and trimming their houses and gardens would be soon return to jungle.
At Touaourou we turn down a side road to the sea and get tangled in a Kanak funeral. We stop while hundreds of people walk from the cemetery, past us, to the church. Many of the men have dreadlocks and T-shirts with the colours of the Kanak independence but it's the women who stand out in their loose, bright, floral neck-to-calf-to-elbow missionary dresses making the sad gathering look like a celebration of colour.
There is not one French face in the Kanak crowd. This is only a couple of hours' drive it's but a world away from Noumea, where elegant European women totter in high heels, scantily clad couples stroll along groomed beaches and business people drink tiny espressos at pavement cafes.
CHECKLIST
Getting there: Aircalin offers five flights per week from Auckland to Noumea.
Getting around: There are many rental car companies at the airport and in Noumea. Europcar is easy to book online and the pick-up was seamless. French is spoken in New Caledonia but it's easy enough to get by without it. The currency is Pacific French Francs. Many, but not all, ATM machines take New Zealand credit cards.
