Noumea experience- just sharing..

Just got back from a short 6 night holiday with my partner. We spent most of the time in Noumea and met up with relatives who have now gone off around the island. First off we arrived shortly after 7pm local time, after the slow airport experience we got out close to 8 pm. There is No bus operating from Tontouta to Noumea at this time, there are very limited transport options. We had organised our first night in the Youth hostel in Noumea, so no organised bus pickup. As we seem to be on the last plane for the day and airport was rapidly getting deserted we had to use a taxi, cost us 8000 XFP (about AUD$110) to get into town. (Not happy). There are supposed to be an airport shuttle, but this was non-existent at this time of night, don't know reason. We now realised best option would be to book first night at an expensive Noumea hotel that includes airport pickup into accommodation price, it would save you heaps. (This is what relatives had got as they stayed week at Le Surf, for next days arrival).

However the CarSud bus from Noumea to Tontouta is only XFP400 (AUD$5.50 bargain!) but takes a while (1-1.5 hours), this stops at airport (go to left when leave arrival doors at airport) and leaves from rue Paul Doumer (steet) outside the Municipal police bld, corner with rue du Genera Gallieni in Noumea. It is the letter 'C' bus leaves Noumea at 6:15 am, 7:45, 9:15, 10:45, 12:15, 13:45, 15:15, 16:30, 17:30, 18:00express?. And leaves Tontouta 5:00am, 6:00, 8:00, 9:30, 11:00, 12:30, 14:00, 15:30, 17:00, 17:45.

We stayed in the Noumea Youth Hostel, which offers dormitory style accommodation in 4 6 bed rooms and double/twin rooms. reserve: " fax 687 / 25.48.17. or mail yha.noumea@lagoon.nc site: http://yhanoumea.lagoon.nc" We found it to be good, clean, relatively quiet, has great view over city centre, good facilities, mostly Europeans, not many obvious Australasians. Good price , but has a little climbing up from city (price for a view) the walk at night can be through a quiet area, so lookout for yourself if on own, but no worse then any other international city. Price: as of 01/07/2008: Dormitory 4 6 beds CFP 1.600 per person per night / 13,40 euros (children 5 - 16 CFP 750/6,30Euro), Double/twin rooms CFP 3.700 per room per night / 31,00 euros (occupancy 1 or 2 persons same price), Bedding is provided. A supplementary charge of CFP 200 per night and per person will be asked to non-members.

The youth hostel has a bus ticket machine, by them here for 170 XFP, if you buy tickets on the bus they are 200, per trip.
The buses are good, but don't run late, i.e. after 7pm much. the green line number 1 bus goes out to Bay de Citrons and Anse Vata (Bay).

Advice, we bought some cheap snorkel gear in Australia and used it at bay de citrons, there is a good coral reef to the southern end of the beach and you can see lots of excellent marine life, water is a little cloudy compared to outer reef but ok. Apparently you can hire gear somewhere, I recommend bring your own. save you $$ and hassles.

The Tijbaou cultural centre and Aquarium are good value and worth a look. Kuendu beach, half the beach is resort and rest public and can be reached by the green line bus, its way out on a peninsular past Nouville (west of city), it is nice there, apparently "there is a marine reserve at the end of the small peninsular next to the bay", I guess this is the one to the left , "follow the dirt road" I didn't go there but would have possibly been worth a look. Lonely planet book for NC isn't that great IMO, has lots of info in a messy format and you can miss info really easily.

We stayed rest of time at Hotel Lantana, I had read someone’s review here that it is a 'flea pit', it's only 2 star, and isn't very new, we found it cheaper and clean and not too bad. You get what you pay for. Its location is good the busy end of Anse Vata beach with better cafes etc here. The pillows on the bed were terrible; bring a good one for yourself. The balcony view was great (3rd floor). At night the noise from traffic, hoon car culture is alive and well in Noumea ,and the nightclub on the jetty 500m along the bay did get noticeable. Sunday night was quieter. The room's wall mount aircon with balcony door closed hummed away and masked noise, I found this worked for me.

Other observations, the public loos, look like porta loos, and many are they aren't all bad, we bought antiseptic baby wipes in supermarket for hands afterwards, but the liquid alcohol hand antiseptic get at home as I didn't see it in the supermarkets in NC. The prices for wine etc at restaurants is a lot of $$. The numbers of public loos in the city centre, is just like Europe, not too many; outside of Place de Cocotiers, there is the public library, across road from Carsud bus stop(as above), 100XFP in mall 1 block SE of Car sud bus stop. McDonalds, and some restaurants which mean spending$$$. You will find that the one listed on map at the ship terminal is closed when there isn't a cruise ship in town, nor at the municipal market that I found. They could de better for providing clean plentiful toilets, I would be happy to pay a small fee to use them.

We tried phoning around to hire a car the next day for one day, everywhere said, 'nothing available', bad english etc..... your best option is the visit a car rental office in person, we did and organised one straight away. Cost 3-4000 XFP per day. Good value. or you could book over the internet, while there. Maybe it was language barrier or they dislike doing business over phone.

Hope this is a good round up of info to help a fellow traveller to Noumea and NC.
we probably missed lots of better options, if so share them here.......

Cheers.
from the cheapskater

Edited by: cheapskate_traveller

Thanks for the report!

You might try to contact the Moderator, and see if you can add something like this to the fixed post at the top of this category, which gives tips on all the main areas of the islands. Maybe they will let you re-post this whole thing on that, or maybe a few main recommendations etc.

But it would be shame to see this just disappear too easily. Thanks again!