Our last port of call was Lifou on Christmas Day... We, like just about everyone else, walked up to the church "Our Lady of Lourdes", it's a long steep climb but does have lovely views so worth the effort. When you get off the ship walk up past the cross and through the car park up the road, take a left turn and follow the road. It takes about 10, maybe 15 mins to get to the top. On the way there is another road that goes off to the right, this leads down to Jinek Bay which has the most fabulous snorkeling. There’s lots of grass and trees to sit under and the locals have a few tables set up selling soft drinks, water, chips etc.

After a quick dip there we wandered back down the road towards the port again and instead of going back down to the carpark we continued along the road to the other church. After that we paid a guy $10 each to go down to the caves… I reckon if we’d bartered with him we could have got him to take less but as it was Christmas Day we thought we should just pay up! This place is absolutely gorgeous, you walk down a track that quickly starts descending into rainforest and the rocks start to close in on you, it’s a bit strenuous so I wouldn’t advise doing it if you’re not at least fairly fit but it’s soooo worth it, right at the bottom you enter a very dark little cave, although there’s a couple of guys down there with torches to help… and then there’s the little pool, omg just amazing… there’s about a 2 metre drop into the clearest coolest water. You just have to jump off the edge into the dark and when you hit the water it almost takes your breath away it’s so cold but so worth doing it. When we first entered the cave we heard these voices from out of the dark saying “Rodd.. Liane”… OMG really?? Here we are in the depths of the earth and we run into Kaylene and Gary!!! It’s seriously weird how some people you just seem to run into constantly.

From here we walked back to the port with Kaylene and Gary…well I call it a port very loosely, this was another tender port so we pulled up at a little jetty and up a dirt road to where all the locals have a market set up. They were heading back to the ship but we decided we wanted to hang out at Jinek Bay again so, much to Rodds’ disgust, we had to walk all the way back there!! In his defence it was a very hot, muggy day but he certainly enjoyed the shade and swimming once there. Lifou has a lot more than this to offer though.. if you got a taxi or hired a pushbike you can go further afield. I think I'd like to do that cos I'm sure there would be lots of amazing places to discover here, like some of the other islands we've been to this is a real untouched paradise with friendly locals.

We were back on the ship by about 3pm and lay about in the cabin relaxing for a while. At about 4.30 Santa arrived by tender boat, we didn't bother going up on deck with all the screaming kids but managed to get a good view through our window. Then we went out to reception to check our onboard account.. it's very easy to just hand over the cruise card to pay for everything but a good idea to check on it every day or so just so as to not get any nasty surprises!! We'd organised to have Christmas dinner in the Waterfront restaurant with Gary and Kaylene, we ran into them at the bar first for a couple of drinks then went off to dinner together. When we got there the Maitre'D told Rodd he couldn't come in wearing his shorts and thongs as it was formal night!! Really?? Must have missed that memo... oh well... so we had to go back down to the cabin for Rodd to put on long pants ( luckily he packed some ) and some joggers... a bad start to the night but all good, we ended up having a really nice dinner with great company. We finished dinner just in time to go to the show in the Marquee.. Run Away to the Circus, it certainly kept up the standard, all the shows we've seen have been excellent. I'm not 100% sure of everything else we did all night, I know we were at the Karaoke in the Connextions bar around 10.30 and the Champagne Waterfall Party was on in the Atrium... I went along just for a quick look but just about everyone of the passengers was crammed in there so I took a few photos and left.According to the photos we took we ended the night with a drink on the Pool Deck and pizza/hamburger in the cabin!!