L'Austral Review
Volcanos, dancing hay stacks, sharks and water music
Rating by category
Additional details
My dad was stationed in New Caledonia during WW II and I grew up sorting shells he brought home and later looking at his scrapbooks. I was delighted to see it firsthand. Vanuatu was a bonus and turned out to be a highlight.
The shore excursions were excellent, especially the ports in Vanuatu. Being exposed to different cultures is important to me and the islands seemed very authentic and much more exotic than I expected.
My only criticism was the use of the naturalists. On other cruises we have always enjoyed lectures by professors and experts on the area, that included historians as well as naturalists. Some of the lectures were quite good, others were almost insultingly basic. And there was almost no information given about the history of the islands and their place in the world today. I also would have appreciated more information on the people of the islands from an anthropologic viewpoint. With a couple of exception, the naturalists were not very visible on the excursions, it would have been good to have more direct contact with them.
Cabin Review
Excellent storage, relatively comfortable bed, great deck. Our traveling companions had a very unfortunate reassignment of cabins at the last minute. Instead of being directly across from us they were put on Deck 5 in the living room section of a suite, not even a real bed, a sofa bed. They did ask to have it changed after a couple of nights of bad sleep, but this should never have happened in the first place. It took basically a full day out of their trip to get this arranged.