Arrival Lifou — Loyalty Islands

MS Oosterdam Arrives Lifou

Cruise ships arriving to Lifou anchor in Santal (Sandalwood) Bay. From there passengers wishing to visit Lifou must tender into port, meaning that they most board one of the ship’s tenders and ride it to shore.

Tendering into Lifou from MS Oosterdam

As with Nouméa (see last week’s posts), the island of Lifou is also part of New Caledonia. Lifou, neighboring Tiga, and several other smaller islands make up the French commune (administrative division) of Lifou, which in turn is part of the Loyalty Islands archipelago.

Lifou

One of the first things that you’ll notice are the bright sand beaches and crystal-clear waters with saturated blues.

Lifou

To the west of Santal Bay is a tall spit of land projecting out into the sea. We’ll take a walk over there on Wednesday and look around, but if you look at it in the photograph below you’ll see a white structure. That is the Notre Dame de Lourdes Chapel, which we’ll also tour on Wednesday.