Reprovisioning your yacht in Noumea

Noumea Shopping Expedition

Restocking with food and supplies is easy for yachts in New Caledonia because there are excellent supermarkets where you can find just about everything you need and the Rocket Cruising Guide to New Caledonia's section on Supplies and Services will show you exactly where to find whatever you need; supermarkets, hardware stores, marine supplies, cooking gas, fuel, auto parts, and of course rental cars because whatever you are shopping for you'll need transportation to get there.

Noumea Car Rental

For cruising yachts in Noumea the very best car rental agency is Visa Location. Just a short walk from Port Moselle Marina, they speak English, like yachts and have the lowest Car rental prices in Noumea.

The driver needs to be over 22, have proof they have been driving more than 3 years, and have an international drivers license in addition to their national or state drivers license. If the driver does not have an International drivers license or can't proove they have been driving more than 3 years they can still rent a car from Visa but the insurance excess goes way up to 600,000 cfp. The insurance excess is what's owed if the driver totals the car or it gets stolen and you can't produce the the original key to prove you didn't leave the key in the unlocked car. All the car agencies require this in New Caledonia. But most other car rental agencies charge much higher rental rates and include the cost of mileage. Visa will, as a special deal for yachts, rent an economy model car without kilometers included so you can drive away for as little as 1500 cfp a day - that's about AUD$23 or 13 Euro - plus 24 cfp per kilometer. The shopping expedition shown in the google map on this page is about 10km, so that's an additional 240 cfp (AUD$3.36).

The Bing search engine says: "On average a car hire in Noumea costs $74 per day. What is the cheapest car hire company in Noumea? In the past 72 hours, the cheapest car hires were found at Europcar ($105/day), Hertz ($113/day) and Sixt ($119/day)."

Noumea Shopping Expedition

Once we rent a car from Visa we head straight for Casino Giante Supermarket. This is the largest, best priced supermarket in Noumea and they have just about everything - fishing gear, kitchen goodies, electronics, booze, clothes as well as bio section, fresh veggies, cheese, a butcher, sea food, bakery, canned goods, asian goods, free range eggs, candies and crunchies, and much more. It's open from 8AM till 8PM every day BUT the best time to shop is from 10AM to 1PM on weekdays. Giante is packed with shoppers on the weekends and anyway, Visa Location is closed on the weekends. A word of caution, we don't recommend the butcher or the fast food BBQ at Giante. We use the butcher at Casino Port Plaisance - better quality and price.

Next stop is the BioMonde, the largest health food store in Noumea. While Giante does have self-serve bulk foods they are cheaper at BioMonde (and even cheaper at Boko). Plus we prefer to buy organic foods and honey at Biomonde.

Thiriet, a frozen food supermarket is right across the street from Biomonde. They have good prices for frozen foods and a gigantic selection.

One block further down the road is the Michel-Ange shopping mall. The supermarket there has an excellent selection of fresh and frozen foods. The store tends to be higher priced than other supermarkets but they often have goodies the other stores don't. There's also a pharmacy and a hardware store in the shopping center.

If you leave the shopping center on the south side (where the hardware store is) you will see a road leading to Boko - a self-serve bulk food and veggie store with excellent prices.

Next stop is Casino Port Plaisance Supermarket. This is also where we prefer to shop for butchery and veggie products. Their fresh fruits and vegetables are currently the lowest price we've found in Noumea.

The Carregfour Market is on the way back to the marina but lately their prices have been excessive and they have had issues with their freezers so we currently are not shopping there. But stop by to have a look if you have time, you might find something you like there.

By this time you probably couldn't fit anything else into the economy car unless you have already to detoured back to the marina after shopping at Giante. 😆

The Village Market is right next to the Port Moselle Marina. You can usually buy veggies, pastries and seafoods of much better quality and cheaper at the supermarket than in the village market - dumb as that sounds.

The Auchan Ferry's Quay is actually the closest supermarket to the marina but the prices are generally higher than Giante. If you just need a couple of things you can easily carry and are staying at the Port Moselle Marina it's a good choice.

You get to keep the car for 24 hours so if you rent it at 10AM you have time to do some additional shopping the next day. And you need to top off the fuel tank before you return it to Visa Location.

ncvan.us/ns

Put ncvan.us/ns into the browser on your smart phone. Turn on your location and you will see your location on the map and the roads to take to get to the stores. Obviously the driver should not be driving and looking at the phone so let the co-pilot give verbal directions. 😃

Here is a link to the kmz file and it will work in navigation apps with turn by turn navigation like OsmAnd, Maps.me, Gaia GPS or GuruMaps for better offline tracking.