Blogs from Papua New Guinea, Oceania - page 4

DAY 5 (Apr 21) We were off very early on the track to beat the mad rush and avoid being trampled by the Boston marathon runners. The big tour that was camped at top of Brigade Hill were keen to get started but we wanted to get the jump on them to get going. We headed downhill toward Efogi village passing Mission Ridge on the way. Efogi Village was quiet a large village compared to some of the others we had visited. It was a great chance to sit on the green grass and eat bananas and drink a Coke in front of the local market stall as we watched trekkers come and go and we took happy snaps with the local kids who were amused that we were on our own. We kicked off the ... read more

My heart was pounding like a sledge hammer inside my chest, and my pulse rate was over 100. My quad muscles in my legs were burning and I was saturated with sweat as I struggled up a ridiculously steep muddy incline. Traction in the slippery conditions made progress difficult. It seemed like this hill had no peak, just never ending false crests. I wanted to sit and get a brief rest to allow my pulse to recover but there was nowhere to stop and nothing but mud to sit in. I thought at that point I would never make this trip to the end. That is how i felt on the first big hill we tackled on the trek. When I checked our progress on the map I discovered that the first hill was just a ... read more

Our small missionary plane is landing. We can see a small village immersed in the greenery. It is Yaniruma. There is a real welter on the runway: people are going from all over the village and just in a couple of minutes all the native population is already here. We are quite a novelty for the natives, just like they are for us. Some of them are examining our group with a wary curiosity, the others are turning away when see the lens of my camera. But they don’t show any open aggression. Our guide gives competent instructions and soon all our luggage, which is just a little less than 500 kilos, has been loaded on some backs or heads. The long caravan, resembling of an ant column, moves steadily to Simon’s house at the far ... read more

The soothing rain is knoсking upon the roof. Simon's wooden house hastily hammered together fell into a deep sleep. Two of our guides and a whole team of porters are sleeping in the next room. Judging by the rumbling snor, everybody are exhausted. Now, in a relative safety, the men finally dared to relax . Only Simon is quietly walking around the house, checking the locks on the doors and windows. I can hear the creaking of the floorboards under his feet. We are his guests and he care of us. I'm lying on a straw mat, right on the wooden floor in a room with no furniture, having wrapped in a dirty and damp sleeping bag. The candle is burning down in the corner of the room, and next to me my best friend and ... read more

New Guinea is a country which has gone from the Stone Age to the Computer Age in the space of 50 years. It is a most unusual place. New Guinea is one of the world’s last frontiers. On this small island, there are over 800 known languages and the population doubles every 20 years. As a primarily agrarian society, most people survive on a subsistence level. We stopped at two ports in this exotic country. The first up was Alotau and this was as primitive a spot as you can find and light years away from our previous ports in Australia and New Zealand. One of the first significant Allied victories in WWII occurred here at Milne Bay. Other than the monuments memorializing these events, there is not much to the town of Alotau. We took ... read more