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

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 warm weather. If a sailing holiday is what you are thinking to have, New Caledonia is located in a part of the Pacific that has the largest coral lagoon in the globe. Sailing charters are available and with the assistance of the trade winds you can sail out of the capital city of Noumea along the coastal line, past the many small islands that dot the ocean around the New Caledonia. Other outdoor activities on the Island are scuba diving, snorkel diving, horseback riding, canoeing, and kayaking.

If you were thinking of a gourmet holiday, New Caledonia has almost everything you could want. New Caledonia’s capital city, Noumea, widely known as the Paris of the Pacific. Noumea offers fine gourmet French food and wine along with the other benefits of a active cosmo town. The restaurants here are some of the finest in the South Pacific. Colonized by the French in 1853, New Caledonia has a well-defined French influence when it comes to food and wine.

There are lots of eateries, 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 specialty of the Island, including spiny lobster, prawns, crab, and mangrove oysters. One of the national dishes is Bougna, which is fish or chicken, combined with sweet potatoes and bananas wrapped in banana leaves and then baked covered in sand on hot stones. For the adventurous traveler on a gourmet holiday, you can taste a dish common with the locals, bat stew.

New Caledonia is the vacation destination you want to be: a sailing holiday, a gourmet holiday, or a time to just relax by the beach.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 6:10 am and is filed under Eatables, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.