Noumea, New Caledonia - The sun is shining through coconut palms and the air is warm and moist. Poinsettias, about three metres high, bloom at roadside among wild roses and hibiscus. A rental car is headed toward the beach, its driver looking forward to white sand and turquoise sea. Thud.
The car has hit a pothole the size of a baby's bathtub. Nothing is perfect, not even the Isle of Pines, a small island that is part of New Caledonia, a French overseas territory in the South Pacific.
The car shrugs off the bumpy ride. It seems to have the same robust good-nature as the ground personnel for the transfer flight to the island. The metal detector was switched off, allowing passengers to walk through with their bags.
And the personnel did not bat an eyelid when passengers heaved big chest freezers onto the baggage conveyor belt. On the return flight, the freezers would be filled with fresh spiny lobster, mackerel, and grouper from the Isle of Pines.
New Caledonia is a group of islands between Australia and Fiji. Noumea, the capital, is on the island of New Caledonia (the Grande Terre or "Mainland"), which is nearly as large as the German state of Thuringia. Here the lifestyle is European. The streets are filled with cars, and people are dressed as elegantly as in Nice.
On the much smaller Isle of Pines, a half-hour flight from Noumea, the living is tropically easy. The island offers a maximum dosage of South Pacific flair, just as one pictures it in the gloomy months of autumn and winter in Germany.
New Caledonia registered fewer than 90,000 tourists in 2007, a third of whom were French nationals visiting relatives. A total of 403 came from Germany. This may now change, though. UNESCO, the United Nations cultural body, added the lagoons of New Caledonia to its World Heritage List in July.
The islanders rejoiced, and hope that their tourist treasures will get more attention.
Hans Beinert already appreciates the treasures. A dentist from Germany's Baden region, he has been sailing around the world for the past seven years with his wife and two children.
"We ended up in New Caledonia by accident," Beinert says, explaining that sailing friends from New Zealand told him about the place.
His friends' raves were not exaggerated. What was meant to be a brief visit has grown into a stay of nearly three years. Beinert pulls local peoples teeth in the morning, and sails or goes diving in the afternoon.
The Isle of Pines is little commercialised compared with other destinations in the South Pacific. There is hardly a soul on its beaches. This alone is reason enough to travel halfway around the globe to reach it.
But there is another reason to come to New Caledonia: the Loyalty Islands. Small, tropical paradises that are part of the territory too, they have a character all their own.
As for the Mainland, tours are available, and active holidaymakers can do almost anything they please: sailing, diving, paragliding, and jeep tours, for example.
Perhaps such a well-functioning idyll as New Caledonia should remain an insider's tip. Beinert, who enjoys the tranquillity, does not think so, however. Despite the UNESCO listing, neither the French, engaged in large-scale nickel mining here, nor the locals see nature preservation as the foremost priority, he says.
"If more divers, sailors and tourists appreciative of intact ecosystems came, the archipelago could be better protected and New Caledonia would have a good future."
Internet: www.newcaledoniatourism-south.com.
