Elad’s blog

A thousand times more beautiful, interesting, challenging a rewarding than Australia’s east-coast. Papua-New-Guienea is certainly one of the highlights of my journey thus far. This post is just a few advices I can give to anybody who plans to go there. Call me directly for more.

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Following the success of my PNG travel thus far, I decided that the capital, Port Moresby, is safe enough for a visit after all. Thus, I changed my flight plan and got one day at Moresby, where I spent 9 jolly good hours with a local family that I met on the plane.

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The first thing that strikes you at Madang is the birds. Specifically, the lack of any. And to be precise, the bats.
The city is just full of bats. During the day they sleep on the trees (which makes all the trees look like huge bat colonies) and during the morning and evening hours they fly to the jungle to feed, which causes the sky to be filled with huge herds of bats, very clearly visible in the dim evening light.

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Here is a small tragedy that happened in Lae’s Rainforest Habitat, a really cute little zoo thingy. A few months ago their mail tree-kangaroo felt thirsty. It went down to the pool, leaned to drink, and got instantly decapitated by the massive crocodile that lurks this pool. This is the main reason that on my tour of the place, I only got to see the poor widow and the small child it left after him. I did, of course, see the fat and fatal crocodile.

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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.

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Here are a few extracts from my notes, as written during my first week at PNG . These notes describe my journey in PNG’s highland areas, and my journey on the boat till I reached Rabaul, where the mask festival took place. The festival itself - as the rest of my adventures here at Rabaul - will be covered elsewhere. I am now in Rabaul, where I finally have internet (though extremely expensive); I will probably stay here two more days (tomorrow I dive, the day after tomorrow I hope to fly), and than head to Madang for the last part of my PNG adventure.

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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.

I will start from the end: my flight to Papua will be with their national flight company, Air Niugini.
I leave Cairns on 7/7/05 at 12:00, onboard flight PX93. I am to return here at 24/7/05, with Air Niugini flight PX98 - leaving Port Moresby at 18:25 and arriving at Cairns about an hour and a half later. What will happen between these two flights? I have no idea yet, but I have a week to plan.

Getting these flights was very tedious work. I went to several travel agencies - starting with Quantas (who strongly recommended me not to go to PNG, because it’s dengerous) and ending at Air Niugini. In the middle I went through some local agents. All of them wanted to send my passport back to Brisbane (some even to Sydney) to issue my visa. Only at Air Niugini did they know about the nice woman, who serves as a consulate or something, that can issue visas without sending the passport back half the continent; so I went looking for her.

Roselyne is a nice woman. Originally from Rabaul, she now lives with her family in Cairns. She runs a small shop with Papuanian souvenirs, arts and crafts; besides that, she also helps travelers in all sorts of consulate and immigration issues. Her shop is supposed to be open from 9:00, but as her kids are on vacation today she took the time and only arrived there around 11:30 - when I was already pretty nervous, having walked to her place at least three times just to find it closed (with all neighbor shops telling me that “she should come soon” and “she can’t be very far”). By the time she arrived I almost gave up and sent my passport to Brisbane through a travel agency - which would mean I arrive to PNG only after all the nice festivals end. When she did arrive, however, she was extremely nice and polite, kept smiling, and was in general very helpful - she promised to have my passport ready by Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning, and she takes less money than all the travel agents!

Thus, I booked a flight to the first available date with cheap flights, and now I have a week to prepare my homework, and study about PNG. As a first step, I already bought Lonely Planet’s guide to PNG - a brand new print, fresh from May 2005! Now I only need to read it… The first page there explains that Papua means ‘Fuzzy Haired People’, and that this was termed by a portuguese explorer (who heard this word from a Malayan trader). It also says that on the last count they had there 867 different languages - and I probably don’t know any of them. This should really be an amazing adventure.

Now that I know what I will do next week, I can finally go and see what there is in Cairns. My first impression is that there are plenty of malls and shopping centers here; and every second store offers a day-tour for diving in the reef. But I still didn’t have time to feel this city - I was too busy with arranging the visa and the flight. Another thing that I want to do, and will happen here, is that finally I’m going to eat a kangaroo or a crocodile, just to get to know the local animals from a different angle.