Are you looking for a vacation destination that is truly unique? Fancy somewhere with a beach and sailing opportunities, plus the cuisine and ambiance of a metropolitan city. A perfect vacation that provides all of this is a trip to the French settlement of New Caledonia, situated between Australia and Fiji.

This island is located farther south compared to other South Pacific islands, benefiting from southeast trade winds, plenty of sunlight and warm weather. If a sailing holiday is what you are intending to have, New Caledonia is based in a part of the Pacific that has the largest 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 coastal line, past numerous small islands that dot the ocean around the New Caledonia. There are also heaps of other outdoor activites such as scuba diving, snorkel diving, horseback riding, canoeing, and kayaking.

If you were hoping for a gourmet holiday, you can get everything you could want on New Caledonia. New Caledonia’s capital, Noumea, also known as the Paris of the Pacific. Noumea boasts delicate gourmet French food and wine along with the other benefits of a active cosmopolitan town. The restaurants here are some of the best in the South Pacific. Claimed by the French in 1853, New Caledonia has a well-defined French influence when it comes to food.

There are plenty of places to eat, ranging from sidewalk cafes to elegant bistros. French cuisine is easy to come by, but other alternatives 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 steamed covered in sand on hot stones. For the adventurous traveller on a epicurean vacation, you can try a dish common 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 on the beaches.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 24th, 2009 at 9:28 am 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.