Ruisseau des Kaoris - a thermal hot spring

Distance: 9.7 km.  Elevation low/high/total: 0/154/299 m.
Difficulty: 3.0/10.  Scenic: 7/10

A great little hike that leads to a low key thermal springs spa
Click on pic to view album of pics
Link to the geotrack is here,

An old friend of mine, Jim Greiner, and his wife visited us for two weeks in mid February.  Near the end of their stay, Jim and I got away - just the two of us - to tackle a hike I'd wanted to do (and possibly claim an FTF on a geocache).  The hike is just past Prony Bay and ends at a thermal hot springs.  The creek that delivers the warm water is called Ruisseau des Kaoris and is fully described here.  On our way to the hike, we explored a bit with Frog (my venerable Land Rover) and managed to get ourselves into a bit of a pickle but we just as quickly 4WD'ed ourselves out of trouble.  We parked the frog (here) and set off on the hike.  It was a very hot, sunny day so we got a good workout even though the total hike was just a tad until 10 km.  We wandered through forest, on very slippery dried red mud, forded streams, walked through an abandoned fish camp - much of the usual stuff for a New Caledonia hike.

It had rained prodigiously the past few days before the hike and, as a result, all the rivers in the southern half of the country were swollen and fierce.  The point at the hike where we should have crossed the river (that empties into the bay) was simply not crossable on this day.  That little detail wasn't going to stop us.  We backed further down towards the bay and I decided to swim across to the other side ... only it turned out we could wade across as it was low tide!  We quickly found the thermal springs - a lovely spot with a developed pool and picnic table and platform and completely barren of other folks.  Though we were sweating profusely, we were determined to take a dunk in the hot springs, only to find that: they weren't hot at all and, in fact, the pool was rather refreshing  No disappointment there though!  Later, we found the geocache (FTF!) and then took our time on the hike back, stopping and swimming wherever possible.  A highly recommended hike - only 200m of elevation gain/loss, 10 km round trip, and absolutely lovely.