On my recent trip to New Caledonia, I did a fair amount of driving. As someone with limited driving experience outside of North America and Japan, some of the street signs were not intuitive, such as this bicycle-related sign that I presented as A New Caledonia No-Bikes-Allowed “What am I?” Quiz:

To someone used to driving in North America or Japan, the sign above clearly and unambiguously means "No Bicycles Allowed", because anything with a diagonal red slash through it means "No  whatever  Allowed".

Along those lines, the sign at right would clearly mean "no cars allowed", but in New [...]

We had a family vacation to New Caledonia last week. When my wife suggested it, I had to look it up because I had no idea where it was. Here it is:

The capital, Nouméa, at 22 degrees south latitude, was just starting to enter its summer.

It's a bit more well known in Japan due to a well-known travelogue, 「天国にいちばん近い島」 ("The Island Closest to Heaven"), published in 1966. The book was also made into a movie.

Minimal research before I left told me it's a French Republic with, like so many islands in the Pacific, a marginalized indigenous population.

Driving around during our vacation in New Caledonia, I came across a number of road signs whose meaning was not intuitive to me, including the one above. I thought it might make a good "What am I?" quiz.

The sign obviously doesn't mean "No Bicycles Allowed" or I wouldn't be posting it here.... unless, of course, I'm doing the whole reverse-psychology thing to fake you out. But then again, I may well be doing the whole reverse-reverse-psychology thing to fake you into thinking I'm trying to fake you out.

Frankly, I'm so confused now that I don't even know. Anyway, [...]

I found a place to rent a bicycle here in Nouméa, New Caledonia. It turns out that they had only junk mountain bikes. Paid 40% extra to get a helmet. Went out this morning for most of the AM, and ended up riding about 76km (47mi) all around hilly Nouméa. It really made me appreciate my bike.

To be continued...

Note to self: coral is hard and in a scraping situation vs. your knee, you will lose. Avoid when possible.