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.

We took a drive away from tourist areas of Nouméa, deep into the unpopulated interior. Having looked at the map of the area, I'd been thinking to rent a bicycle and ride there, but I wasn't able to find one to rent. Instead, we all took a drive there today, and I'm glad I didn't try to ride there unprepared. We went hours and hours without the slightest sign of civilization other than the road. No stores, no gas stations, no houses, no farms, no commerce or human presence of any kind except the occasional Provincial nature area (devoid of [...]

Sadly, we're at the Hilton on the mainland, with the worst in-room WiFi I've seen since.... well, since I last stayed at a major American hotel chain.

I've been meaning to write about a nice little solo ride I had two weeks ago, to the Ochiba Jinja shrine. It's the same place that I wrote about in "Great Day in Kyoto’s Colorful Northern Mountains", which actually happened the next day.

The course for this day's solo ride can be seen on my cycling heatmap.

The fall colors had been pretty subdued, but with my health back after six weeks of colds/allergy/something, everything looked beautiful to me.

The small sign pointed up what looked like a driveway, but turned out to be an old logging road. I probably [...]

On a visit to the Enkoji Temple in northeast Kyoto yesterday, this couple in traditional kimono kindly posed for a wigglegram:

Anyone wearing kimono in these settings is certainly noticed by the camera, and it turns out that my camera had noticed her earlier, lost in thought in the main garden-viewing room...

This was part of Day 2 of Paul Barr's visit to Kyoto, which I'll write more about later. Day 1 was a visit to the Tenjuan Temple.

Continued here and here (sort of)