New Caledonia OVERVIEW
Kanaky, as the indigenous Melanesian inhabitants dub New Caledonia, is a one-of-a-kind experience. Everything you usually consider typically Pacific like shimmering azure lagoons, white-sand beaches baking in the sun and exotic cocktails sipped leisurely in a palm shade is here, but it's only a part of the equation. Add to it the sophisticated French ambience of gourmet restaurants and designer boutiques, cosmopolitan crowds sauntering along rue de Sébastopol and Côte d'Azure-like glam, and it's only now that you arrive at a more precise picture of New Caledonia.
This enigmatic French territory just north of the tropic of Capricorn is world's third largest island after Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. It consists of a cigar-shaped mainland, Grande Terre, often referred to as La Roche (The Rock), Ile des Pins, a charming pine-clad island of golden sand stretches and an emerald lagoon, the Loyalty Islands, the d'Entrecasteaux Reefs and the more distant Chesterfield Islands. Since 1946 New Caledonia is a France-dependent land with a number of recurring conflicts related to the topical issues of self-government and French nuclear testing as well as attempts to shake off the shackles including the Kanak revolt of 1878.
Unlike its many neighbors, New Caledonia is not a volcanic island but a fragment of an ancient continent that drifted away over 250 million years ago. The origins and millions of years of isolation led to the uniqueness of the island's fauna and flora. Any a naturalist traveler will certainly find the local wildlife, steeped in a variety of endemic species, truly enticing. If you add to it the dramatic scenery of snaking rivers and Hienghène jagged peaks plummeting directly into the lagoon, the Isle of Pines with exquisite white beaches backed by towering pines and waters perfect for sea sports or Maré, pulsating with the Kanak culture, you are bound to reach a place where your holiday money turns out to be very well spent.
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