Land Ho. This morning we arrived at our first port of call for this cruise Noumea. This is the capital of New Caldonia, We have been to Noumea last cruise and ended up hiring a person to drive us around and see the Mangroves and view points. This time I decided that we would venture out by ourselves. It was so quick and easy to get off the boat and they had heaps of buses lined up to take us to the cruise port. We got off in the container port as Anthem is too large so you have to be bussed out to the main street.
We had decided to head to the aquarium for 2 reasons.
- The Noumea Aquarium is significant for its successful breeding of the rare nautilus it is also one of 2 places you can see them in the world.
- The Noumea aquarium is also home to one of Anthony’sbucket list animals which is the Mantis shrimp.
When we got to the cruise terminal we bought tickets for the hop on and hop off bus which does a small circuit around Noumea. Its was only $15 and would give us some freedom to move around for the whole day.
We got the bus down to Lemon Bay and arrived a little early for the aquarium so we decided to head off and find some coffee. We found this really cool place opposite the beach. It was called La Barca it was full of character and charm. We got some coffee and relaxed until the aquarium was open.
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Visiting the Nouméa Aquarium was honestly suprisingly amazing. It’s not a massive place, but it’s packed with marine life from the local lagoon, which is part of a huge UNESCO-listed reef system. Most of the species you see there are actually native to New Caledonia with some of the fish and sea snakes only spending 2 months in the aquarium before being released back to the wild. The tanks are really clean and looked after.
The aquarium also does a lot behind the scenes, like helping to grow and protect coral and studying local marine species. It’s actually really important for conservation in the area, especially since coral reefs are so fragile and easily affected by environmental changes.
The glowing coral displays were definitely a standout—they use special lighting to show how corals fluoresce, which is something you wouldn’t normally get to see. This aquariums original owners were also the ones that discovered biolumenice in coral so that was pretty cool.
These little garden eels were my favourites. Garden eels are small, slender fish that live in burrows on the sea floor, often resembling seagrass when they extend their heads out to feed on plankton. They are very cute.
We finally made it to one of the coolest moments at the aquarium. We found the Peacock mantis shrimp. At first it was just hiding in its burrow, and we thought that was it. But then after a minute, it slowly came out like it was checking us out. Then it posed for pictures before running back in it was crazy.
The colours were insane it was bright greens, blues, and reds and it honestly didn’t look real.
We then got to see the Nauticulus. Nautiluses are often called “living fossils” because they’ve been around for hundreds of millions of years and haven’t changed much over time they are freaking cool.
After the aquarium Anthony decided we needed to try French McDonalds. The different menu item here is the Royal Cheese and also goat cheese patties. They were ok not great though.
We then headed into one of the french bakeries to have some delicious chocolate pastries.
We did a bit of shopping and then jumped back onto the boat. We had a beautiful sailaway from Noumea we even sailed past Ile Ouen which was a beautiful mountainous island. Absolutely stunning.
We did some friends trivia and got dressed for tropical night this ship has been so fun.
After another wonderful dinner we went to Name that Tune game show. The description of the show is Name That Tune on Royal Caribbean is a fun, interactive game show where guests try to guess songs as quickly as possible. Music clips are played, and participants compete to name the song or artist, often in a lively, high-energy setting with a host leading the crowd.
It was a full on game show setup and was actually really fantastic.
