New Caledonia on a budget
October 20th, 2007 by Tim Uden
Before visiting New Caledonia I heard all sorts of horror stories about what an expensive place it is. It is true that you can pay $50 for a steak and $30 for a salad but it is also possible to visit New Caledonia on a budget. I won’t go as far as to call it cheap, but it can be affordable if you’re careful how you spend your money.
Eating out in New Caledonia can be very expensive and wine in restaurants is pricy (even though you would expect French wine to be one of New Caledonia’s few bargains) and a rum and coke can cost 1200F (AUD $15.90, EUR €10, GBP £7, USD $14.38). Even McDonald’s isn’t cheap with a 50c cone costing 140F (AUD $1.85, EUR €1.17, GBP 82p, USD $1.68) and a Big Mac (or a Royal Cheese) going for 435F (AUD $5.76, EUR €3.65, GBP £2.54, USD $5.22).
However you can also live cheaply in New Caledonia. Snack bars abound where you can get lunch for around 500F (AUD $6.63, EUR €4.19, GBP £2.92, USD $6) and patisseries sell sandwiches and panini for 300-500F (AUD $3.97-6.63, EUR €2.51-4.19, GBP £1.75-2.92, USD $3.60-6). Supermarkets and convenience stores sell baguettes for 85F (AUD $1.13, EUR €0.71, GBP 50p, USD $1) and you can buy a six-pack of locally-brewed Number One or Kronenbourg 1664 beer for 600F (AUD $7.95, EUR €5, GBP £3.50, USD $7.20). A can of soft drink from a convenience store costs 120F (AUD $1.59, EUR €1, GBP 70p, USD $1.44).
There is only one hostel in New Caledonia so budget accommodation is hard to come by, but Nouméa’s youth hostel is no more expensive than a similar hostel in metropolitan France, and it boasts a better view than any of Nouméa’s fancy hotels.
The biggest obstacle to a cheap holiday in New Caledonia is the cost of the flight there. Nouméa is only a two hour flight from Brisbane, which makes it closer to Australia than New Zealand, but it costs a lot to get there. The Qantas/Aircalin codeshare has a monopoly on the route with return fares from Sydney starting at AUD$730 (EUR €462, GBP £322, USD $660) for a fare booked around five months in advance. Compare this with a return flight between Melbourne and Singapore (three-times longer than the flight from Sydney to Nouméa), which you can get for as little as AUD$550 (EUR €348, GBP £243, USD $498).
If there were more hostels and a bit of competition between airlines flying to Nouméa, then New Caledonia would be cheaper and it could become a popular destination for backpackers. It has plenty to offer including watersports (brilliant for kite-surfing, windsurfing, snorkelling and diving) and I can imagine backpackers coming here to learn French (just as Spanish language schools are popular amoung backpackers to Latin America).
Leave a Reply