The Little Train Le Petit Train is a motorised tour on normal roads, that runs several times a day. It is an area tour, but you can also hop off one train, and catch the following service. Check the timetable, though, because it may be cancelled or only offer two services on a given day.
The city is also serviced by 8 colour coded bus routes that costs 210 CFP if you buy your ticket on board as of January 2010, or 190 CFP. Others have recommended this only if you feel your French is up to scratch, as the bus drivers very rarely understand anything but French. It is sufficient to know that the bus goes to "Centre Ville", then hand over the money and state the number of tickets required une personne, deux personnes, trois personnes, etc.. The big catch is working out where the buses start, as Ligne 2 leaves from a different point to numbers 1, 2, 6, 7 and 9 from memory. The majority of buses go from near the ticket office in Place des Cocotiers, where Rue d'Austerlitz passes through the Place. Ligne 2 departs from a rough piece of ground near the corner of rue Clemenceau and rue de la Somme, within sight of the Municipal Markets and the cinema and a couple of blocks south of Place des Cocotiers.
You can buy a number of tickets in advance at the office on rue d'Austerlitz it's more of a booth, actually but you need to validate the appropriate number of tickets for the trip when you board the bus that includes the ones you buy from the driver. Validation just means stamping them with a time and a date, but this is nowhere explained. We heard rumours of ticket-selling machines that were in shops, but never saw any. We also heard of an all-day ticket, but never managed to track that down either. The bus line is called Karuia (http://www.karuiabus.com).
The first trick is to recognise a bus stop when you see one. These are white-ish pillars, usually with a name on them, sometimes with a shelter from sun or rain, but usually with no indication of the lines that stop there.
Also available for tourists is a "Noumea Explorer" service that runs an hourly loop pass the major tourist sites Museums, Parc Forestier and Zoo, Tjibaou and hotels hourly. That for 1500CFP a day March 2010 price, is a great idea to be used to explore each of the sites for an hour before catching the bus onto the next location when it comes past again. The service takes a little over an hour, the stops are hard to locate at the start, and you need both a map that shows the stops, and also a leaflet from your hotel or a tourist office that gives the timetable.
