Cylone Vania.......

Well we have just sat out our 1st cyclone here in Noumea. There has been many promising to come over the last 4 years but none ever actually made it across the mountain ranges that lays down the centre of this island. Vania obviously was very persistant and wnated to show us what she was made off. We spent Thursday waiting to see if anything was going to come of the tropical depression the was moving over Vanuatu then 5pm that afternoon everything & everybody was preparing for the lockdown that comes with the code red warning. From Thursday evening the winds started howling and the rain was coming in sheets. We watched this from the safety of our home or should I say heard for the next 36 hours. It is a very weird feeling to be in the middle of such a storm. It was eerily grey and you feel all closed in, to look out the window you see a haze over the landscape which is just the rain falling but it makes everything all blurry. There were no cars moving around and no lights on anywhere. It felt very much like a ghost town. Only now as I write this has the sun come out a bit but the winds are still fierce. Everytime I go to open the front door I need to becareful it doesn't get pulled out of my hands.

We are happy to say it is all over but we are kinda happy to say we have finally seen one too but I don't think I would like to encounter another one for a while.