On paper it looks idyllic but in reality our enormous cruise ship (1600 pasengers and 750 crew members) endeavoured to follow, to catch up and to remain with a serious tropical storm. The result: swells of 4 to 6 metres, everyboby on drugs walking like total drunkeds. For our part we escaped the worst and discovered the virtues of green apples and ginger against nausea. 
Mystery Island, first island of the Vanuatu’s, splendid even in the rain particularly under (salted!) water. Activities of the day: snorkling, walking tour of the island (30 min), shell and coconut collecting. 
With a few rays of sun and decent tropical winter temperatures, Port Vila (the capital) is welcoming. Our program: playing in the natural pools of a superb waterfall, a walk in the forest and through a banana plantation, and snorkling (again) in the port… which had a great coral reef (potatoes). We meet a few locals, happy to bump into French tourists and to speak one of their 3 national languages. 
Lifou, the largest of the Loyalty islands, under curtains of tropical rain makes one want to come back and visit in the sunshine. Complety Francophone, not very touristic, very well preserved... it must be a real treasure under normal conditions. Our experience of Lifou is a difficult, bumpy, tender from the ship and then a race between heavy showers to visit a vanilla “farm” in the (well-named) rain forest, the cliffs of Dokin, and the beach at We. We reward ourselves with a good meal at a typical local restaurant (on the menu BBQed shrimps, manioc, ignames, vivaneau and coco-punch ). 
In Noumea we are warmly welcomed by our former neighbours in Paris: Sonia, Hervé, Clémence et the little last one Anaëlle. They show us around the open market, several impressive lookouts, the “citrons” bay, etc. We are invited to share a meal at their place with the excellent local shrimps and then, after ice scream in town, it’s already time to go back to the ship. We must visit again! 
Back in our tiny cabin for 3 days at sea, as the Isle of pines stop has been cancelled, officially due to swine flu restrictions. We believe that it’s rather the rough weather that couldn’t allow P&O to carry us to shore safely. We compensate by eating nearly continuously because there’s nothing much else to do, despite the long list of old-fashioned and boring activities. On the positive side, Kim loved "her" kids club and Lilou all the dance floors where she became quite a success...
To close off the holidays, 3 reasonably dry days around Auckland. We were positively impressed by the wild western beaches (Piha, KareKare, Muriwai, Whatipu), the lively bays in town (Devonport, Mission Bay,...) and the iconic Sky Tower.Bye for now; a little video should be the highlight of the next entry...
