New Caledonia

Yet it would be a mistake to limit it to a postcard: its friendly people and Melanesian cultural heritage make it much richer than that. Surrounded by the world's largest lagoon, the «Caillou», as it's known here, certainly has a delicious taste of paradise. But with its vegetation straight out of the Jurassic period, its red soil sometimes so «heavy» that it only grows vegetation slowly adapted to living in metal, its Pacific cowboys and its Melanesian population whose traditions go back to the dawn of time, New Caledonia is also an unusual destination, multifaceted and full of the unexpected.