Saturday Feb 28, 2026
Hi Folks! Today we were anchored off the island of Lifou, in New Caledonia. Lifou is the largest of what’s called the Loyalty Islands. The population is roughly 10,000 people and there are 36 different tribes (or communities) on the island.
We were recently in a part of the world called Polynesia but this area is called Melanesia. It’s a major subregion of the Southwest Pacific, stretching from New Guinea to Fiji. It includes nations like Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia.
Our excursion today was called “Melanesian Encounter”. Our first stop was at a lookout area called Sandalwood Bay. They had several totem pole type relics there and we could see our boat anchored offshore.
We then went to the Paramount Chief’s hut from the Xepenehe Tribe. When we got there we had to take off our shoes and hats before entering the hut and were given a welcome “hat” to wear. They explained how the Chief would hold tribe meetings there.
We then went to the tribe’s outdoor living area where they cook their food and have their open air community gatherings. We learned how they make their traditional meal of “bougna”.
Bougna contains taro, yam, sweet potato, bananas and pieces of chicken. The contents are wrapped in banana leaves and buried and cooked in a ground oven, which uses red-hot rocks heated by fire. After 1.5 hours of cooking, the banana leaves are unwrapped and the contents are eaten.
We got to see them cut up the ingredients, wrap it in the banana leaves, tie it up and place it in the fire. But the best part was we got to taste the final product and it was very yummy! Go Bougna!!
After the tour, we took the van back to the port. As we were walking down the pier we saw a cute turtle pop his head out of the water. We then took the tender back to the ship and it was a little rocky with some rough waves.
We got onboard and had some lunch and even got to play a passenger game in the late afternoon. We played Skee Ball and won a Regent point. I’ll do another update tonight. Hope everyone’s having a great day!
The Wandering Italian 