Nov 24th, 2012 at 8:00AM: A team of explorers traveling to a remote island off the coast of Australia has made an unusual discovery. Or perhaps in this case, it is more accurate to say that they made an "un-discovery." It turns out the tiny piece of land known as Sandy Island doesn't actually exist despite the fact that it appears on nearly every map and atlas in the world.
The research ship RV Southern Surveyor was ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
NewCaledonia posts
The Mystery Of Sandy Island
Nov 24th, 2012 at 8:00AM: A team of explorers traveling to a remote island off the coast of Australia has made an unusual discovery. Or perhaps in this case, it is more accurate to say that they made an "un-discovery." It turns out the tiny piece of land known as Sandy Island doesn't actually exist despite the fact that it appears on nearly every map and atlas in the world.
The research ship RV Southern Surveyor was ...Overseas France: Or Where You Can Find France Outside Of France
Oct 5th, 2012 at 11:00AM:
The days of colonial empires may be long over, though the United States, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands and Denmark continue each to administer a smattering of overseas territories.
Among these, France has arguably the most interesting and wide-ranging set of territories. Overseas France includes tiny St. Pierre and Miquelon off the coast of Newfoundland (population around 6,000), the ...Reflections on a round-the-world journey
Oct 25th, 2010 at 9:30AM:
Several nights into our journey, as we were speeding along dark roads en route to our guest house on the island of Lifou in New Caledonia, I felt a bolt of irrepressible excitement of the sort familiar, no doubt, to most travel enthusiasts. We'd just spent several nights in big, bold Sydney, a bona fide world city, well-organized and self-evident. Sydney was exciting, but, truth be told, not ...Round-the-world: Capricorn Route trip top ten
Oct 18th, 2010 at 11:30AM:
Later this week I'll reflect on the ups and downs of our round-the-world trip. I'll look at what we might have done differently as well as those elements that turned out to be particularly well conceived. In the meantime, here's a playful top ten list of some of the best things we encountered along the way: best beach; best ice cream; best tourist trap; best breakfast; best market stall; best ...Round-the-world: Two half-days in Noumea
Sep 29th, 2010 at 10:00AM:
Coming and going between Australia and Lifou afforded us long layovers in Nouméa in both directions.
The driving force behind my interest in Nouméa is the Centre Culturel Tjibaou. The cultural center was named after Jean-Marie Tjibaou, a leader of the Kanak independence movement, assassinated in 1989. (Kanaks are Melanesian New Caledonians, and they form a plurality of the ...Round-the-world: Dodging sea snakes on Lifou
Sep 23rd, 2010 at 10:00AM:
From Sydney we took a two-and-a-half hour morning flight to the French territory of New Caledonia and then jumped into a taxi headed to Nouméa, the capital. We then spent the better part of an afternoon exploring the capital. (Don't worry. I'll circle back to Nouméa in a future post.) Ahead of us: six nights on Lifou, one of New Caledonia's four Loyalty Islands.
Our Air ...How to take a round-the-world trip
Sep 10th, 2010 at 10:00AM:
An open-ended round-the-world trip can be led by whimsy and happenstance and benefit accordingly from extremely loose planning. A more structured, time-limited round-the-world trip necessitates figuring out transportation in advance. With five weeks to play with, we fell into the latter camp.
I emailed AirTreks in the spring and dutifully submitted an itinerary through their global map ...A round-the-world trip: Where?
Sep 8th, 2010 at 10:30AM:
Once I'd dispensed with my unrestricted fantasies of scurrying from seldom-visited corner to seldom-visited corner (see Monday's post) we got down to the essentials of figuring out where we wanted to go.
The Micronesian islands of Palau and Yap were our first priorities. Both destinations had been on our radar for years. Palau with its faintly stinging marine lake jellyfish and the ...Exciting Repositioning Cruises for the Fall
Jun 15th, 2010 at 1:00PM: Repositioning cruises are the leftovers of cruising. When cruise ships need to move from one port to another at seasonal cusps, they take less conventional itineraries to get from one home port to another. Repositioning cruises can often be booked for less than more conventional cruises on a per-night basis.
Repositioning cruises are also, somewhat ironically, a good option for independent ...
