Extensive Studies
I’ll start with the important thing. Here is a skeleton I made to my PNG tour. As you notice, it is pretty detailed, because unlike most of the other parts of my journey this IS a place that needs preparations. If any of my readers know something about this country, and has advices or comments about my plans - please do send me your remarks. I am still planning and any advice is welcomed. The plan goes like this:
* Thur 7/7 - Flight from Cairns to Port-Moresby and a direct transit to Mount Hagen, in the Highlands.
* Fri 8/7 - Morning at Hagen markets. Later in the day, taking a PMV (Public Motor Vehicle, the local version of a bus and an adnventure on its own) to Goroka, still in the mountains. The PMV should take 6-7 hours.
* Sat 9/7+Sun 10-7 - Goroka and the surrounding vilages.
* Mon 11/7 - a PMV tour from Goroka to Lae. This will probably consume the entire day.
* Tue 12/7 - a flight from Lae to Rabaul.
* Wed 13/7 - Thur 14/7 - Rabaul and its surroundings. Visiting the Mask Festival and maybe diving.
* Fri 15/7 - Flight from Rabaul to Kavieng
* Sat 16/7 - Sun 17/7 - Kavieng. Visiting another festival, and maybe some more dives.
* Mon 18/7 - Flight from Kavieng to Wewak. As there is no direct flight, it will probably need to go through several connection.
* Tue 19/7 - Taking a PMV ride of 3-4 hours from Wewak to Angorum, a village on the Sepik river.
* Wed 20/7 - Fri 22/7 - Sailing a Canoe on the Sepik, the base point is Angorum and heading probably to the village of Tambanum. By friday evening I should be back at Angorum.
* Sat 23/4 - taking the PMV back from Angorum to Wewak.
* Sun 24/7 - taking a flight from Wewak to Port Moresby, with direct connection to the flight from Port Moresby back to Cairns.
As you notice, I skip the most dangerous part of PNG - the city of Port Moresby; I plan not to leave the airport there.
I am still not sure wether I should fly to Mount Hagen or directly to Goroka.
I also still have to find out where exactly I can drink the water there, and where they must be boiled; Malaria is probably a great danger anywhere in this country.
This tour is going to be extremely expensive because of all the domestic flights; but it is necessary if I am to cover all three major areas of PNG: the highlands, the islands, and the Sepik, as well as attending the festivals. The Sepik in particular is going to be very expensive and challenging.
If you got to read that far in this post, you probably know already what I did in the last two days: what I didn’t do at home - a quite extensive study of PNG. For this I spent much time bugging people - from Air Niugini flight agents (yes, they come so PNG, so I correctly assumed they should know a thing or two about their country; and they are extremely nice and patient) to local travel agents that usually sell packages to PNG, but kindly helped me prepare my tour eventhough I did not book it with them.
Besides, I also saw the War of the Worlds movie, an experience which I recommend to skip (you can easily find a better way to spend a couple of hours); and I met many of people I know from my journey - there were Dash and Sheena from Fraser (enjoy your journey to NZ!), Sylva and Anuk from the Whitsundays (Hope you had an easy flight back to Europe!) as well as three of the dutch guys from the Whitsundays (find your lift quickly!). I also spent some nights partying at local nightclubs (their music volume is much less loud than in Israel, and indeed there is much less smoke here, too); but I am not that great a clubber.
I am now to continue my PNG preparations, and maybe tomorrow I will start really looking into Cairns and its surroundings.
July 2nd, 2005 at 5:47
elad!
soon your pictures from the party that i took will be on Layla site..
(and the video)
July 2nd, 2005 at 8:17
It sounds like you are travelling to PNG just so you can mark a large ‘V’ on your location list. How about going there for the experience, without so much pre-planning? Have a plan but be opportunistic.
Oh and also there are lots of flights, which are pretty tiring. How about covering some parts of PNG which don’t require flights, and leaving the rest for next time? I would go to the festival and travel driving distance around that.
And most important - have fun!
– Arik
July 2nd, 2005 at 13:57
Good luck with PNG. Are you carrying your big pack to PNG or would it be a better idea to pack light (considering all the flights and the canoe trip) and leave the rest in storage at Cairns ?
What about the car ?
July 2nd, 2005 at 14:07
BTW - here’s a nice trick you can do when you add a new post - write just a couple of paragraphs, then hit the “More” button (you also need to remember to put an empty line either before or after the “More”, otherwise it doesn’t look that good).
What will then happen is that on the main page, everything up to the “More” will be viewable on the main page and then there will be a link to “read the rest” which will take you to the article page where everything will be displayed normally.
This allows you to keep the main page shorter - maybe pack in more posts to be visible on the first page as there are only 5 currently and it still huge (you write a lot man: go you !
) - and make people go to your post pages, so you can get an accurate reading (in the counter at the bottom) of how many people actually read each post.