Looking for a holiday destination that is truly extraordinary? Fancy someplace with a beach and sailing opportunities, plus the cuisine and ambiance of a metropolitan city. A perfect holiday that provides all of this is a trip to the French settlement of New Caledonia, located about halfway between Fiji and Australia.

As New Caledonia is situated further south than many of the other islands of the South Pacific, its climate benefits from southeast trade winds, plenty of sun, and balmy weather. If a sailing holiday is what you are thinking to have, New Caledonia is situated in a part of the Pacific that has the greatest coral lagoon in the globe. Sailing charters are freely available and with the assistance of the trade winds you can sail out of the capital city of Noumea along the coastline, past the many small islands that dot the ocean around the New Caledonia. The island also offers other outdoor activities such as scuba diving, snorkel diving, horseback riding, canoeing, and kayaking.

If you were hoping for a gourmet holiday, New Caledonia has heaps to offer. New Caledonia’s capital city, Noumea, also known as the Paris of the Pacific. Noumea features fine gourmet French food and wine along with the other benefits of a active cosmopolitan town. Some of the finest restaurants in the South Pacific can be found here. Colonised by the French in 1853, New Caledonia has a well-defined French influence when it comes to food.

There are great deal of eateries, ranging from sidewalk cafes to high-class bistros. French cuisine is easy to come by, but other selections include Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and African food. Seafood is a speciality of the Island, including spiny lobster, prawns, crab, and mangrove oysters. One of the national dishes is Bougna, which is fish or chicken, mixed with sweet potatoes and bananas wrapped in banana leaves and then cooked covered in sand on hot stones. For the adventurous traveler on a gastronome holiday, you can try out a dish favourite with the locals, bat stew.

You can make a vacation to New Caledonia anything you want it to be: a sailing holiday, a gourmet holiday, or a time to just relax by the beach.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Online Travel Resources, Vittles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.