Elad’s blog

This post describes my adventures at Rabaul - the volcanic center of PNG. It covers my impression from this dust-covered place, the mask festival, the volcanoes, and some pretty wonderful dives. I write it just before picking the flight to Lae, from where I plan to continue over to Madang - my last destination on PNG. It is also composed of notes I wrote over a few days in my notebook.

• NOTE DATE: Saturday 13/7/05

  The city of Rabaul is a totally surealistic sight. It is located between two active volcanoes - mount Tuvurvur and mount Vulcan. They both erupted in 1994 (and before it: 1937, 1897; and some huge earthquacks in the middle) totally burrying the city under volcanic ashes - the buildings simply collapsed under the weight of meters of dust that accumulated upon them. Thus, what you have now is sort of a ghost-cityy, where you can wander around skeletons of buildings, vast plans that used to be a city-center, and other areas - all the time under vulcanic rain of never-ending dust and ash that falls off mount Tuvurvur, for over 10 years now without a recession.

  I first spotted the mountain around 7 am, where we entered the Gazelle Peninsula. In the morning the mountain looks like a silent movie - spitting smoke, waiting for 4-5minuts till it spreads out, then spitting some more smoke. The real sight, however, comes in the evening: when it is dark outside you can see that apart from smoke the mountain also throws red-hot stones every second eruption (the eruptions go in a wierd sequence: small-large-small-large. On large ones you can see the stones). In the darkness you can also see flashes coming out of the mountain, a very fascinating, almost hypnotic, sight.

  Most of the day I spent with my new hosts - the family of Judas (the guy who was with me on the boat), Pastor Elija, and their friends. I got to eat a mu-mu (traditional oven: sweet potato and banana covered by banana leaves and baked under the ground inside a hole filled with hot stones and covered with soil). I had other new fruits - from the “usual” cocnut (the preferred drink here) through Papaya (locally reffered to as Paw-Paw) and to some peanuts - freshly picked from the garden, just wash the dust and eat.

  The people here have a deep belief and ambition to help any jew and Israeli, as well as study more about Israel. They picked me up from the warf (the bus is marked: “Aliyah” in front, “Shalom” in the back), took me to their village where I rested, took a shower (a busket full of water and an empty can used to throw the water on you - this is the “shower” here), and I even went to the toilets (you guessed it right - a hole in the ground) before they took me to their church - a few shelves in the jungle. I was a highlight, of course, and gave them a lesson of some hour about Israel, including drawing a map with the important points - Jerusalem, Nazareth, Timrat, Kfar-Nahum, Sdom, and so forth. I answered many questions - mainly about the Shabat (the people here realized that Jesus revived on Saturday afternoon and not on Sunday morning, so there was no real reason for the christians to change the fourth commandment…).

  The villages here were taken straight out of adrenture books, including the jungles in the backyards, the naked children, and even the volcanoes in the horizon, the sea and all the environment. I am going to see the festival itself only in the evening - I missed the openning show (which was on sunrise, before my ship arrived) and the next impressive show should be the so-called “fire dance”, after sunset. Tomorrow I plan to spend most of the day in the festival.

• NOTE DATE: Sunday 14/7/05

  The shows of the mask festival are entirely what I expacted - see the movies when I get a chance to upload them. Every dance is colorful and different from the others - the costumes, the music, the dancers. I’ve seen the Fire-Dance (people wrapped in Banana leaves jumping inside a fire); the local Duk-Duks (forest spirits) making a “Wallabi Dance”; the Asaro mud-men igniting fire; a Sepik group making the “Dog Dance” and the “Eagle Dance”; and much more.

  Despite the nice program, the organization is very very weak. Time is meaningless (they use the term PNG time - meaning they start when they feel like and then do a lunch break because it is too hot). Due to some political power combats the festival is being held in a stadium just under Tuvurvur, which means it is under continuous rain of volcanic ash from the mountain (the locals want to revive the city of Rabaul and the government want to evacuate it or vice versa - I didn’t really get it. Anyway, this is the second time they are holding it since the eruptions). This fact causes most of the locals just not to come, so there is very few audiance. Whatmore, there is only one show running at any given time, and most of them simply don’t attract locals.

  In the festival I met an Israel family (the Yuvals from Kfar-Vitkin; father, mother, and two childs), who are currently (for nine months) travelling the south pacific. We talked quite a lot (especially the boy. He was very enthusiastic to see an Israeli), and I got some tips (they recommend going to Samoa and not to Fiji). I guess we will spend some time together tomorrow.
  It is the second time I meet an Israeli family (after the ones at Cambodia) - I wander if there is some kind of new fashion in Israel.

  When I came back to the house where I stay I found out that people have taken extremely seriously the meaning of my name (for all of you non-hebrew speakers: ELAD means something like “God is Eternal”, or “God is Forever”) and they are going to name a baby after me - a young couple humbly asked my permission; and can you refuse? They were very happy that I agreed. We had a few more talks about the bible (yes, of course the mosks on the temple mount will be destroyed sometimes - god has promised, didn’t he?) I went to rest.

• NOTE DATE: Monday 15/7/05

  Here are a few of the things I learned on the talks last night:

  - In the initiation ceremony, young boys enter the houseman for two months of isolation, in which they study the secrets of life: from everything connected to sex, to how you gather clouds, bring rain, find special plants, and much more.

  The locals knew how to fly.

  All the Duk-Duks are females, but only males are allowed to wear their masks; in fact, if a woman sees a duk-duk she will become blind.

  Weddings are arranged by the parents, usually several years in advance, and money is deposited to ensure the child. It usually goes two-ways: my son marry your daughter, your son married my daughter. Payment is done in shells.

  Shells are still a legal money here.

  All the land here belongs to females and not to males.

• NOTE DATE: Tuesday 16/7/05

  The most interesting part of yesterday was in the morning: I paid a visit to the volcanic observatory. I recieved explanations about the mountains (tactonic plates and all the usual things), I studied about Calderas (huge pirs of ancient volcanoes) like the Gazelle bay (yes, the whole bay is one huge crater, with some newly active volcanoes on the sides), I saw the seismographs and the seismic sensors (they use GPS to measure earth movement on strategic points here). I even tipped them about mounting their equiptment - they were trying to install some anti-lightning protection where I was there, and tried to put it lower than their antennas, so it wouldn’t have worked for them.

  Besides this I visited tunnels and bunkers from World-War 2; Rabaul was an important Japanese base, so the poor locals had to dig tunnels inside the hills. I also visited Kokopo’s war museum (small and modest. The main attraction was a new animal called cus-cus which the owners keep there.) I tried unsuccessfully to find a place to burn my camera’s memory card - this will probably wait for a different place. I visited the mask-festival (just a short time) and spent quite a lot of time with the Israeli family here.

  At the night I made a mistake - I didn’t take care in advance for transportations from the village to the mask festival. Because of the Shabbat I insisted that my hosts will not drive me there, so I tried walking by foot, which didn’t work: I got all the way from Kinabot (my village) to Kokopo, but couldn’t find a PMV to get me to Rabaul - it seems they all ended before nightfall! So I didn’t get to see the Snake-Dance (exactly like the fire dance, only with addition of two snakes).

• NOTE DATE: Wednesday 17/7/05

  Most yesterday I was in the mask festival. At the morning I hoped over for half an hour to the church to say hello to the people, and when they started their service I went to town. I met the Yuvals here - they told me I missed nothing yesterday (exactly the same like the fire dance I’ve seen). Close to the end of the festival, the shows start to repeat (they have every group performing on every day). After the festival I went with them and we had a nice dinner at their hotel; than I came back to my hosts.

  It turned up that the Kavieng show was cancelled. Since this is the situation, I have no reason to go there and I will go directly to Madang; only that because of Sunday I am unable to buy a flight ticket, which means I will stay here another day.

• NOTE DATE: Thursday 18/7/05

  Here is something that most divers will find exciting, and most other people just frightening. You jump from your boat into the water and start descending, when suddenly, let’s say around 15 meters deep, you realise that you are in the middle of a circuit - there is a nice grey reef shark circling a school of fish, and you just jumped in the middle.

  Sounds nice, doesn’t it? This is exactly what happened to me on today’s first dive. The shark just continues circuling me another minute or so, till it realised I ruined its breakfast and went to look on a different place. Reslly a good start for my first wall dive. The wall of the bay (remember, it’s actually a crater) is simply a coral wall going straight down, hunderds of meters deep. I just picked a depth and swam along the wall, enjoying the corals and the fish schools than swam up and down along the wall (nice change from the general habit of fish to swim horizontally). After the wall dive I did on shipwreck dive, which was less attractive - just another sunken ship, a bit of clams, fish and corals.

  Surprisingly enough, Rabaul and its surroundings are services by only one dive-master: all the hotels and the dive-clubs just refer you to him. I don’t know why, but the locals simply don’t dive - and they have an excellent see, amazing visibility (mine was 40-50 meters, twice as the red sea, and it was just an average day) and a temperature of 29 degrees (no wetsuits. This is how it goes when you sit on an oven in the ocean floor) - I guess the locals do have some more things to learn.

  Yesterday I visited a fwe more WW2 relics. I went to Admiral Yamamoto’s bunker (on the ceiling there is an engraving showing world map, and how Japan will rule it). I also wandered in the streets of Rabaul - a truely “Cafe Bagdad” feeling, small wind moving volcanic dust in the dead streets, with few buildings still standing and some locals that insist on living there.

  I thought that they probably don’t know, but they should be thankful for Tuvurvur to throw all that smoke on them - it means it is releasing pressure from the magma pit, protecting them from another eruption. The day it stops smoking they should run away - but they will probably happily run back to build the city.

  My dive guide, even, explained to me that evacuating Rabaul is impractical for a simple reason: this is the only place aroud that is sheltered enough from the winds and currents so a deep-water warf can be built. Therefor, Rabaul will be probably built and destroyed over and over again.

[Oded] Update: I found a map of Rabaul, just to give you a brief idea of where Elad is:


Also check out this full size Map of Papua New Guinea (Rabaul is at the top right corner)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 at 5:06 and is filed under Travels, Papua New Guinea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.